Chrisna Du Plessis

• PhD
• Full Professor at University of Pretoria

We are entering a time of change, a time when many tipping points will be passed triggering unexpected consequences for our way of life. Yet it is also a time of great opportunity, a time where it is possible to work towards a thriving, if different, future. This book offers a hopeful response to the often frightening changes and challenges we face...

Zero-Acreage Farming (ZAF) recently developed as a novel land-use form and is aimed at addressing food security and sustainable urban development. While it is often lauded as a sustainable land-use form with potential to improve resource consumption and urban sustainability, little research into the spatial and technological requirements of this la...

As humans struggle to come to terms with how to move forward in the confusing and frightening world of the Anthropocene, a number of new concepts and terms developed to describe different approaches to find meaning and identify appropriate actions and solutions. These approaches define different paradigms of what can broadly be described as ecologi...

Traffic noise transmission through the open windows of naturally-ventilated classrooms can reduce speech intelligibility and can negatively impact academic performance. The findings of a numerical study are presented. Software was used to assess effective noise attenuation solutions for naturally-ventilated classrooms exposed to traffic noise. A ty...

Retail design authenticity has seen global brands expressing a growing interest in unique as opposed to standardised expressions of store design. To express authenticity, global brands may opt for localised retail store design (retail stores that express the place in which the store is designed) as a form of unique retail design that offers an expe...

This research set out to broaden the pool of evidence regarding the acoustic conditions at schools in South Africa. A review of local and international literature, standards and design guidelines shows that the ideal classroom acoustic conditions of 35 dBA ambient and 0.7 s reverberation time are required to enable a suitable environment for teachi...

In response to the burgeoning building integrated agriculture (BIA) discourse and industry, and assumptions of this land use form as a climate change adaptation strategy, this study considers the impact of rooftop greenhouses (RTGs) on the thermal performance of the built environment in current and future climate conditions. Based on empirical evid...

This study discusses the establishment and pilot of a collaborative data library (CDL) for educational purposes, based on a transdisciplinary collaboration between the architecture departments at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and University of Pretoria, South Africa. The CDL was tested Hammarkullen in Gothenburg in a join...

Construction 4.0 makes many promises. The use of technologies will not only improve productivity in the construction of future built environments but will also enhance their operation and maintenance as they become smart cities. These latter stages in the built asset project life cycle are impacted by Construction 4.0 technologies able to both auto...

Globally urbanization is accelerating, especially within developing countries. This often results in vulnerable urban conditions with limited adaptive capacity to respond to climate change-induced hazards. In response, employing innovative solutions that lever existing unused and underutilized interstitial spaces within the urban fabric for climate...

Cities of the world are experiencing multiple and unprecedented crisis and face an ever more uncertain future. Within this shifting environment we need to consider our current approaches to city planning as these are inadequate and ineffective in dealing with many of the challenges. In many cases they exacerbate the problems, as while improving the...

Planning for dynamic cities is a perennial problem that continues to grow in importance in a rapidly changing world. This paper presents a conceptual framework to understand urban change through a complex adaptive systems approach. This framework includes a process of (1) describing the system through setting boundaries and identifying the properti...

This paper examines the important yet largely misunderstood relationship between resilience and sustainability and the gap between these theoretical constructs and the practice of urban development. It explores how these two separate constructs, each with its own theoretical framework, complement and support each other as approaches to the complex...

It is becoming clear that ‘sustainability’ is not enough – that instead of being less bad, we need to focus on how human activities can have a positive impact and help to regenerate the world. With its roots in an ecological worldview, the regenerative development paradigm aims to heal fractured systems, bringing about new life and new ways of bein...

The questions of gated communities are nothing novel or unique to the contemporary urban landscape. Urban enclaves or gated communities have become part and parcel to the types of contemporary development both in terms of an urbanization model and accepted form of public life. More specifically the forms of spatial complexity associated to each urb...

Designing for Hope presents a theoretical argument, backed by case studies, for an approach to sustainability in the built environment that is rooted in an ecological worldview and which focuses on regenerating dysfunctional social-ecological systems. It ties together a number of theoretical threads into a coherent framework which places it at the...

It has been widely argued that in order to move development into a positive curve towards sustainability, society needs to change the worldview/paradigm within which it currently operates; and that such a shift from a mechanistic to an ecological/living systems worldview is already happening. It is suggested that the purpose of the sustainability p...

Resilience is about change and how systems respond to change. To understand resilience it is therefore important to understand how cities respond to change. Cities can be described as social ecological systems that react to change and perturbations through responses at various spatial and temporal scales. In the study of resilience of ecosystems, t...

The concept of regenerative design and development is situated within the broader theoretical context of sustainability. The emerging regenerative paradigm is contrasted with the two current sustainability paradigms – internationally negotiated ‘idealistic’ public policy and private sector ‘Ecological Modernization’ – that seek to maintain the stat...

The broader framing of the decision-making processes of stakeholders within the sustainability debate is explored in the context of a paradigm shift that acknowledges the world as a complex, dynamic system. There is merit in adopting a paradigm informed by, and therefore suitable for dealing with, living systems, particularly as the paradigm is fou...

The demands of climate change are appraised in relation to the impacts on and contribution of the built environment in South Africa to climate change. These demands are situated within the broader South African developmental context. The current status and scope of national policy and strategy initiatives aimed, first, at mitigating the role of the...

The international construction community's understanding of sustainable development is compromised by a systemic communication gap between the developed and developing worlds as well as a failure to address the implications of social requirements. The inclusion of the developing world within the sustainable development debate is argued as essential...

UNESCO Chair International Scientific Conference on Technologies for Development, Lausanne, Switzerland, 8-10 February 2010. Providing municipal services such as electricity and waste water treatment is a major challenge for small towns that often lack the institutional capacity to manage and maintain the necessary infrastructure. High levels of po...

This dissertation engages with the proposition that one of the reasons current efforts at improving sustainability are failing is because solutions are sought from within the same paradigm of thought that threatens sustainability in the first place, and that what is needed is a new ‘ecological’ worldview or paradigm. Using a transdisciplinary philo...

There is no doubt that large-scale development in the built environment and its physical infrastructure is needed in the so-called 'developing countries'. However, these problems need to be addressed in a way that is socially and ecologically responsible. There is great urgency to make sustainable interventions now, while these built environments a...

Copyright: 2005 Taylor & Francis Sustainable development, and by extension sustainable building, is an evolving concept that relies for its implementation on the development of regional and local approaches and solutions. There is, in particular, a split between the definitions, approaches and priorities in developed and developing countries. Subse...

The scope of Africa"s developmental problems and a dramatically different worldview from that of the West requires a different approach to sustainability in Africa. The context of poverty and rapid urbanization suggests that sustainable urban development should be the focus of sustainable construction in Africa. However, it is argued this should be...

This paper explores the links between the requirements for safer communities and those for more sustainable communities. It firstly examines safety as an indicator of sustainable development, as well as the social and environmental factors that contribute to both crime and unsustainable settlements. It then looks at what a safer, sustainable commun...

The environmental and socio-economic threats currently experienced may not indicate the end of the world, but it is the beginning of the end for the world as we know it. Are our responses really preparing us for the changes ahead? To date, the majority of the construction sector's responses have fallen within one of three categories: do nothing; pr...

Attempting a sustainability analysis of human settlements in South Africa is a complex and very challenging task, not only due to the magnitude of the scope of such a study, but also due to the limitations of current analysis methods and the paucity of reliable data. Faced with the task of analysing South Africa's different settlement types in term...

Sustainable development, and with it sustainable construction, is a continuously evolving concept. This has resulted in several iterations of “green” building – from early notions of durability, flexibility, natural building and returning to self-sufficiency, to the currently dominant approach of eco-efficiency. This paper argues that while the pas...

Doing business in developing countries requires a thorough understanding not only of the challenges, but also of the differences of opinion that shapes people’s attitudes and choices. Working in developing countries certainly brings with it a number of challenges such as an uncertain economic environment, poverty and low urban investment, high leve...

World Sustainable Building Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 21-25 September 2008 This paper builds on earlier ecological approaches to urban development, as well as more recent thinking in the fields of sustainability science, resilience thinking and complexity theory, to propose a conceptual framework for understanding cities as social-ecological...

This report is prepared by CSIR Building and Construction Technology, Programme for Sustainable Human Settlement for the Department of Housing The report is divided into four parts which consist of seven chapters. Within human settlement context the report’s understanding of sustainable development is one of an integrative and holistic process of m...

ELECS 2009, Recife, Brazil 28-30, October 2009 Many commentators suggests that in order to effect meaningful transformation of global development pathways, it is necessary to change the worldview that underlies the current development paradigm to a view that sees the world as a complex living system, i.e. an ecological worldview. This paper briefly...

Smart and Sustainable Built Environments (SASBE 09) Conference, Delft, The Netherlands, 14-19 June 2009 Planning problems have been described as inherently wicked, that are difficult to define, unpredictable, and defying standard principles of science and rational decision making. Sustainability science is a new area of science that focuses specifi...