Born and raised in Durban, South Africa, Lindsay is a qualified Architect. Having worked in several countries on projects spanning scales and sectors, she completed an Urban Design Masters at ETH in 2011 with a focus on informality in Brazil. Thereafter she worked as a researcher, facilitator, and project manager in community-driven development and public participation, first for the Urban Age programme and then for the City of Cape Town. During this period, she co-authored two books and a printable website and exhibited in ‘Conflicts of an Urban Age’ at Venice Biennale 2016.
From 2015, Lindsay taught Architectural Design, Theory, and Visual Communication at UKZN and DUT while completing her doctorate, 'A Model for Integrated, High-Rise Urban Living: Learning from Durban’s Beachfront'. Framed around spatial justice, the study investigates a coastal strip of residential high-rises and their socioeconomically diverse inhabitants. Combining quantitative data such as unit size, tenure, cost, and density with qualitative data around ways of occupying space, behaviours, likes, fears and social networks, the work explores a user-centric approach to understanding and intervening in the multicultural city, with a view to deriving design-level tools and theories applicable to high-density housing.
Lindsay is passionate about hands-on spatial design teaching in a postcolonial, crisis-plagued world. She is interested in analogue ways of learning about urban places, people and cultural practices through exploring, drawing, documenting and storytelling, and in uncovering hidden narratives and imagining alternative futures. As a lecturer on the MA Architecture & Urbanism, she heads up the Cooperative Urbanism Lab which focuses broadly on the Social City - all things 'collaborative, communal and convivial'. Themes covered in the studio include Informality and the self-made city; Participatory planning and co-design; Co-living and the sharing economy; Pop-up, temporary and tactical urbanism; and Play, emotion and the sensory city.
Academic and professional qualifications
2022 PhD Architecture - Durban University of Technology (DUT), South Africa
2011 MAS Urban Design - ETH Zürich, Switzerland
2004 PrArch (Professional Qualification) - SACAP, South Africa
2001 BArch Advanced (Master equivalent) - University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa
1997 Bachelor of Architectural Studies (BAS) - UKZN, South Africa
Previous Employment
2020 - 2022 Department of Architecture, DUT - Lecturer
2016 - 2021 Department of Architecture, UKZN - Lecturer
2011 - 2016 AHG, Deutsche Bank - Contract Project Manager & Researcher, Urban Age
2012 - 2015 World Design Capital 2014 Department, City of Cape Town - Programme Manager
2007 - 2010 Foster + Partners, London - Architectural Assistant
2004 - 2007 Soundspace Design, Durban - Architect
1997 - 2004 Various architecture practices in South Africa, Melbourne and the Netherlands