Daniel & Associates Architects is a specialist firm involved in strategic projects, which draws on a wide experience of 35 years of architectural practice.
Daniel & Associates Architects is a specialist firm involved in strategic projects, which draws on a wide experience of 35 years of architectural practice, covering a wide range of project types. These include Urban Design through architectural projects to Industrial Design products. The projects range from small-scale residential to large industrial developments, as well as convention centres, educational facilities, hotels and offices.
The practice was originally set up in Durban in 1976 by Ivor Daniel. In 1978 a new firm under the style of Daniel & Associates was established. This practice received recognition and publication for a number of projects in the fields of conservation and industrial architecture. In 1985 the practice merged with Stauch Vorster Architects (SVA) of which Ivor Daniel became a director, responsible for the design and marketing portfolio. He later became the Managing Director of Stauch Vorster Architects (Durban), responsible for “design delivery” throughout all projects. In 2002 he established a branch office of SVA in Dubai, which closed in 2007. In 2008 he re-opened the original practice, Daniel & Associates, with a compliment of young talented architects. The practice is a small but select design oriented consultancy.
Architecture is pragmatic art. There are many people involved in the building process, many possibilities inherent in the problem itself, many ways to arrange the spaces, to marry the building to its site, and techniques to construct it. Design is really a tool. It is a means of intergrating and resolving the inevitable conflicts that range from public private to socially acceptable/commercially viable in order to reconcile the artistic aspect of making a building within cost, time and quality control. By trying to optimize all the givens within a consistent framework of values upon which design decisions are based, we hope to arrive at a whole which is more than the sum of its parts.
In addition, we attempt to fit the building optimally to its programme; we are concerned with responding positively to the site context. We are interested in the flexibility of buildings, as a way of resolving the conflicts between public and private, the community and the individual and short term and long term requirements. Flexibility for choice, change and growth has its problems as well as its benefits. In the end it means resolving and integrating all conflicting requirements.
