Jhono Bennett

ENGAGEMENTS A core part of the TUM Plenary Week in Cape Town was learning through engagement — listening to local knowledge, experiences, and practices that continue to shape the city in complex and often unequal ways. Students engaged with community leaders, activists, researchers, farmers, practitioners, and residents through conversations, workshops, walks, and shared reflections. These exchanges explored housing, food systems, ecology, infrastructure, memory, and the everyday negotiations that shape urban life across Cape Town. Thank you to Daiyaan Pieterson, Barry Christianson, Jeremy Jones and the Lukhanyo Urban Farming Network for their generosity, openness, and willingness to share their work and experiences with the group throughout the week. We are also deeply grateful to colleagues, students, and staff from the University of Cape Town for contributing to the discussions and helping facilitate moments of exchange across institutions, disciplines, and contexts. The programme builds on CUSP’s broader commitment to collaborative and transdisciplinary urban research that connects design, ethnographic methods, and lived realities across the Global South and North. #CUSP #TUM #UCT #CapeTown #UrbanResearch #ParticipatoryDesign #UrbanEcologies #SouthernUrbanism #CommunityEngagement

REFLECTIONS & DESIGN The final phase of the TUM Plenary Week in Cape Town focused on reflection, synthesis, and translating field experiences into design thinking and urban research methodologies. Following several days of immersion and engagement, students worked through collective reflection sessions, mapping exercises, discussions, and coursework development — asking how architecture and urbanism can respond more carefully and relationally to histories of inequality, environmental precarity, and spatial exclusion. The programme encouraged students to critically reflect on positionality, collaboration, and the role of design beyond purely technical solutions. Through drawing, storytelling, mapping, and conversation, students began developing design approaches grounded in observation, listening, and lived experience. At the heart of the week was a broader question: how can urban research and design move beyond extraction towards forms of practice rooted in repair, reciprocity, and long-term engagement? Thank you to everyone who contributed to making the week such a meaningful experience. #CUSP #TUM #UrbanDesign #ArchitectureStudio #SpatialJustice #Repair #SouthernUrbanism #DesignResearch #CapeTown

FIELD EXPERIENCES During the Plenary Week, students and staff explored questions of Southern urbanism, repair, memory, and spatial justice through direct engagement with the city and its communities. The programme moved across Kalk Bay, Khayelitsha, the False Bay coastline, and broader urban landscapes of Cape Town — grounding discussions in lived experience rather than distant abstraction. Students participated in walks, conversations, mapping exercises, storytelling practices, and immersive site visits that explored histories of displacement, labour, ecology, and everyday urban life. A special thank you to Traci Kwaai and the Fisher Child Project for sharing histories and lived experiences connected to the Fishermen’s Village and the broader Kalk Bay community. Thank you as well to Chartfield Guest House for hosting the group and creating an important base for the week’s activities. Rather than treating Cape Town as an “object of study,” the programme sought to foreground reciprocal learning, immersion, and situated forms of knowledge production. #CUSP #TUM #CapeTown #SouthernUrbanism #UrbanResearch #SpatialJustice #KalkBay #Fieldwork #Architecture #Urbanism

Introducing Jhono Bennett @jhonobennett An architect, urban researcher, and teacher working between South Africa and elsewhere — moving between practice, teaching, and learning from the people already shaping cities in their own ways. Jhono’s work explores reparative architectures, spatial justice, and participatory design practices across Southern urban contexts, often focusing on how care, maintenance, and collective agency can help build more just urban futures. “Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” — Howard Zinn Something you might not know: Jhono spends a lot of time thinking about maintenance — not just in buildings, but in relationships, teaching, and everyday life. Probably more than he thinks about “design” in the conventional sense. Last book read: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee — a difficult but important South African novel that lingers long after finishing it. Favourite snack? Biltong. Of course #CUSP #UrbanResearch #SpatialJustice #RepairativeArchitectures #Urbanism #ParticipatoryDesign #SouthernUrbanism #CityThinking #ResearchLife @repairativearchitecturesza

Symposium, May 20-22 2026 [from] Adaptive Reuse [to] Adaptive Architecture The Symposium will support a redefinition of the boundaries between architectural design and #ADAPTIVEARCHITECTURE to explore meaningful theories of building alterations. * * * * * * * * * Wednesday, May 20, 2026 at 14:15-14:35 Lobby, Nicol Building, Carleton University INTRODUCTION TO THE CONFERENCE TOPIC Federica Goffi [Author of the Call for Papers] [from] ADAPTIVE REUSE [to] ADAPTIVE ARCHITECTURE * * * * * * * * * Wednesday, May 20, 2026 at 14:35-15:40 Lobby, Nicol Building, Carleton University Session: FROM THE PEDAGOGY OF THE NEW TO A PEDAGOGY OF ADAPTABILITY Moderated by Federica Goffi JHONO BENNETT, ZACHARY FLUKER & MAXWELL MUTANDA | ASHLEY MASON | KONSTANTINOS AVRAMIDIS See the BOOK of ABSTRACTS & PROGRAM — REGISTER here: / #CarletonUniversity #MyCarletonU#CarletonArchitecture #SchoolofArchitecture #ASAU  #ForumLectures #building22 #architecture #adaptivereuse #BartlettSchoolofArchitecture #ArchitectureTeaching #adaptivereusearchitecture #[from]AdaptiveReuse[to]AdaptiveArchitecture

CUSP brings together theory, fieldwork, and practice-based research to produce grounded public knowledge. We combine spatial and visual methods with collaborative research practices — grounded in ethics: credit, consent, and care. Our research does not stop at the academic paper. We work through exhibitions, toolkits, visual outputs, and public conversations. #CUSP #ResearchPractice #PracticeBasedResearch #CollaborativeResearch #UrbanMethods #SpatialPractice #VisualResearch #PublicKnowledge #UrbanResearch #Ethics #Care #Consent #KnowledgeProduction #urbanstudies

Urbanization unfolds unevenly. Some places are planned for, invested in, and protected. Others are shaped through neglect, extraction, and exclusion. These conditions are not accidental — they are produced. CUSP studies peripheralisation as an active process: how political decisions, economic systems, and design practices shape unequal urban worlds. By paying attention to the edges, we learn something fundamental about how urbanization works — everywhere. #CUSP #SpatialJustice #UrbanInequality #Peripheralisation #UrbanPolitics #UrbanEconomies #UrbanDesign #UrbanTheory #GlobalUrbanism #UnevenDevelopment #UrbanEdges #Justice #UrbanResearch #builtenvironment

CUSP is a research platform focused on how urbanization unfolds — and how it is shaped by inequality, power, and uneven development. We understand the periphery not as a place, but as a process — produced through planning, policy, infrastructure, finance, and governance. Over the next few weeks, we’ll introduce who we are, what we’re working on, and what comes next. #CUSP #Urbanization #Peripheralisation #UrbanResearch #SpatialJustice #UrbanTheory #GlobalSouth #UrbanStudies #Inequality #BuiltEnvironment #Urbanism #Planning #UrbanFutures #researchpractice

This week, @repairativearchitecturesza hosted Keller Easterling in Johannesburg and Cape Town for a series of conversations on infrastructure, spatial systems, and the political possibilities of design. Beginning at the University of Johannesburg Graduate School of Architecture @happeningatthegsa in Johannesburg and continuing at the University of Cape Town School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, @apg_uct the visits created space for students, researchers, and practitioners to engage Easterling’s work on infrastructure space, medium design, and the often hidden systems that shape our cities. The talks opened a dialogue between Easterling’s research and ongoing conversations around repair, spatial justice, and Southern urbanism — exploring how architecture can work within complex political, social, and technological environments. In Johannesburg, the lecture continued with a conversation with @jhonobennett as respondent. In Cape Town, the discussion was followed by a response from @surayascheba Scheba, with Bennett moderating. Thank you to everyone who joined the conversations across both cities. This visit forms part of the broader Repairative Architectures programme supporting dialogue between global architectural research and local urban realities. Supported by the @mandelawashfellowship Mandela Washington Fellowship #RepairativeArchitectures #KellerEasterling #UCTArchitecture #UJGSA SouthernUrbanism SpatialJustice

This week, @repairativearchitecturesza hosted Keller Easterling in Johannesburg and Cape Town for a series of conversations on infrastructure, spatial systems, and the political possibilities of design. Beginning at the University of Johannesburg Graduate School of Architecture @happeningatthegsa in Johannesburg and continuing at the University of Cape Town School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, @apg_uct the visits created space for students, researchers, and practitioners to engage Easterling’s work on infrastructure space, medium design, and the often hidden systems that shape our cities. The talks opened a dialogue between Easterling’s research and ongoing conversations around repair, spatial justice, and Southern urbanism — exploring how architecture can work within complex political, social, and technological environments. In Johannesburg, the lecture continued with a conversation with @jhonobennett as respondent. In Cape Town, the discussion was followed by a response from @surayascheba Scheba, with Bennett moderating. Thank you to everyone who joined the conversations across both cities. This visit forms part of the broader Repairative Architectures programme supporting dialogue between global architectural research and local urban realities. Supported by the @mandelawashfellowship Mandela Washington Fellowship #RepairativeArchitectures #KellerEasterling #UCTArchitecture #UJGSA SouthernUrbanism SpatialJustice

This week, @repairativearchitecturesza hosted Keller Easterling in Johannesburg and Cape Town for a series of conversations on infrastructure, spatial systems, and the political possibilities of design. Beginning at the University of Johannesburg Graduate School of Architecture @happeningatthegsa in Johannesburg and continuing at the University of Cape Town School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, @apg_uct the visits created space for students, researchers, and practitioners to engage Easterling’s work on infrastructure space, medium design, and the often hidden systems that shape our cities. The talks opened a dialogue between Easterling’s research and ongoing conversations around repair, spatial justice, and Southern urbanism — exploring how architecture can work within complex political, social, and technological environments. In Johannesburg, the lecture continued with a conversation with @jhonobennett as respondent. In Cape Town, the discussion was followed by a response from @surayascheba Scheba, with Bennett moderating. Thank you to everyone who joined the conversations across both cities. This visit forms part of the broader Repairative Architectures programme supporting dialogue between global architectural research and local urban realities. Supported by the @mandelawashfellowship Mandela Washington Fellowship #RepairativeArchitectures #KellerEasterling #UCTArchitecture #UJGSA SouthernUrbanism SpatialJustice

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