ANDREW was born in Bloemfontein. He matriculated at Germiston Boys' High whereafter
he studied architecture at the University of Cape Town School of Architecture, thereafter development planning at the Graduate School of Ekistics in Athens.
Between 1964 and 1967, ANDREW worked in the United Kingdom as an architect and urban planner before taking up a position as a provincial planning officer in Livingstone, Zambia. In the late 1960s, while working as a provincial planning officer in Zambia, he helped design the upgrade of a large-scale squatter settlement in Lusaka, a project which was implemented with a $40-million loan from the World Bank. This was the first project of its kind in the world. Thereafter he spent much of his time in private practice dedicated to strategies for upgrading informal settlements as well as projects for the Hostel Dwellers' Association. ANDREW became internationally recognised in the field of low-cost housing. He also wrote books and articles on strategies for low-cost housing.
He returned to South Africa whereafter he helped start the Urban Problems Research Unit at the University of Cape Town in 1976 to address issues of social justice and the need to restructure South African cities. Using his Zambian experience, he played a leading role in the design of an upgrade for Crossroads outside Cape Town, the earliest and largest informal urban settlement in the country, which the apartheid government was determined to demolish.
The Urban Foundation, led by Dawid de Villiers QC and Jan Steyn, used his research and technical arguments to persuade the then government that informal settlements could be upgraded into livable places, and that informal jobs done by the residents of these settlements were essential to the economies of developing countries. ANDREW worked closely with Crossroads residents, who responded by naming one of their streets after him. He pursued his efforts to upgrade Crossroads and incorporate it into the life and economy of Cape Town. .
ANDREW was also involved in fighting for removals of persons under the then Group Areas Act. One of his greatest successes was helping to prevent the removal of the Paternoster fishing community on the West Coast.
Typically, he was interested in practical solutions based on extensive research and solid technical arguments that could be implemented and change people's lives.
In 1993, following a triple heart bypass, he returned to his first love, watercolour painting, and exhibited in places as diverse as Constantia Valley in Cape Town; Hampstead, London; and Nieu-Bethesda. He developed an international reputation as a landscape artist. His ideas were informed by the ancient art of geomancy and contemporary parallels of the Gaia hypothesis that the Earth is a living organism and we are mere extensions of it.
ANDREW had married and was survived by Bosky (nee Roberts the daughter of Andrew Roberts, founder of the construction company Murray and Roberts) and their four children (extracted and edited from his obituary in the Sunday Times). List of projects With photographs
With notes
Mansa Trades Training Institute: 1971. Mansa, Zambia - Architect
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Books by ANDREW Andrew, Paul & Japha, Derek . 1978. Low income housing alternatives for the Western Cape. Cape Town: Urban Problems Research Unit, University of Cape Town
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