A PATH that led from Port Elizabeth, carried on through other parts of South Africa, and on to Israel and the US has led an architect and his family back to an award-winning community project in the city.

And, aptly, for class of 1960 Grey High matriculant Stan Field, one of the themes of the Ubuntu Community Centre being built is the interconnection of paths used every day by the people of dusty Zwide.

“The idea is that the centre should be a place where people and activities meet,” said Field, who now practises in the town of Palo Alto, in the San Francisco Bay area of California. He first became involved in designing the centre in 2006 and it has been the project closest to his heart since then.

“It is also designed to be welcoming – so there are no walls around it, which some people might find strange at a time when more and more homes and businesses are putting up security fences and walls to keep people out.

“We want people to feel welcome at the centre, so to have it surrounded by an impediment to its use would defeat the purpose of it serving the community’s needs.”

Field was in Zwide for a site visit to the R40-million centre this week with his son and fellow architect Jess, who is also writing a book about the project. The centre is scheduled to open later this year and has been funded by donations, many of them from South Africans now living overseas.

Field said the principle of “ubuntu” – literally meaning “humanity” but used to describe the interdependence of people on each other and the community in general – had also been designed into the centre.

“The various walls of the building are not all perpendicular – they show the strength of interdependence by leaning into each other, as people should depend and count on each other.”

The uniquely designed centre – which will include clinics, a computer centre, meeting rooms, administration offices, and a spectacular high-ceilinged hall – is the brainchild of the co-founders of the city’s Ubuntu Education Fund. They are local Banks Gwaxula and American Jacob Lief, who have undertaken the fundraising.

Asked why the centre had to feature such unique architecture when a more extensive building could have been provided for the same price using more conventional techniques, Lief said there were good reasons.

“The objective was to create a unique landmark, something that would be recognised and of which the community could be proud.

“I’m often asked why it has to be so different. My answer is that it would not stand out so much as being unusual in another part of Port Elizabeth.

“It is a symbol to the people of Zwide, particularly young people, that they can achieve as much as anyone else in terms of education, jobs and their future.

“Even local people say the centre should maybe be in town, but we want to change that mindset – the Ubuntu Centre embodies the concept that anyone can achieve what they set out to do.”

Lief said Field had been chosen as the architect because of his international reputation in designing unique yet practical buildings, while his links with Port Elizabeth also provided a further dimension.

And the choice and combination have worked, as anyone passing the 2000m² centre – a landmark in every way as it reaches its final stages of construction off Qeqe Street – will realise.

It has already won the progressive architecture honour award, judged by an international panel in a project run by Architect magazine in the US and open to entrants worldwide.

The father-and-son team and the Ubuntu centre were recognised for “addressing multiple matters in their work, such as community, environment, technology, urbanism, and economics”.

The company received two awards in the competition last year, the other for a project on a wine estate in Argentina, and Field senior has received wide recognition since graduating from Cape Town University in the 1960s.

But he still has a close association with the Eastern Cape as he is also involved in a game reserve project in the Karoo.

“Port Elizabeth is my home town – after all, how can you forget or leave behind the place where you learned to surf?” he asks.

Since his schooldays at Grey, he has studied and lectured in various parts of the world and also had a practice in Johannesburg.

“That was when Sandton was still in the bush,” he recalls, adding that he had been involved in creating the original “civic spine” which had now become the highly developed Sandton retail and commercial centre of today.

He, wife Carol and then-young Jess went on to live in Israel for 12 years, and Field snr became chief architect of Jerusalem, where, he says, he learned “lots about politics and town planning”.

They moved to the US in the early 1990s as opportunities were opening up, particularly in the Silicon Valley area – which was becoming a world centre for the computer industry – settling in nearby Palo Alto.

Jess, now 34, joined the practice and is recording and photographing the community reaction and thinking on the centre, together with its development, construction, and final use.

“It is all about people and drawing them into the centre, whether for medical treatment at one of the clinics, for meetings, learning how to use computers, or enjoying themselves in the hall,” said Field jnr.

“We have even included a rooftop vegetable garden and concentrated on people being able to look out from the building and get a different perspective on Zwide as most buildings there are built at ground level.

“From these points, you can see how the various paths in the town lead to and through the centre.”