Touching the Earth Lightly was approached to submit a project proposal for the construction of an exhibition space for the City of Cape Town's Green Goal Program. The Green Goal Program consists of various environmental initiatives undertaken by the municipality of Cape Town aimed at countering the negative environmental impacts associated to the construction of the Green Point World Cup Stadium.

Nine organisations submitted project proposals to the City of Cape Town for the construction of an exhibition space.

Touching the Earth Lightly established a joint venture with ST&AR Architects and was appointed to build the stand based on the project concept as captured by Andre Rademeyer of ST&AR Architects below:

"The pavilion for the Green Goal takes on the by-line ‘Give Waste the Boot‘. It takes this idea to a highly sustainable level by sourcing all construction materials within a 2,5km radius of the site thereby reducing the carbon footprint for the pavilion. The materials are all either recycled waste; re-usable; re-claimed and new purchased for re-use afterwards.

The form of the structure is a cube – a simple, singular, powerful, memorable and iconic shape. It stands above the throng and acts as a billboard for the ‘Green Goal’ campaign. The exterior is clad in plastic waste collected from City Bowl restaurants housed in a matrix of multicoloured milk crates, tied to a cubed scaffolding frame. Low energy lighting illuminates the crates from the behind turning it into a glowing ‘jewel box’ by night. The interior is clad in timber planks and an abundance of live specimens of fragrant Fynbos plants in hanging baskets and acting as ‘wall’ backdrops to focus areas such the water fountain. The interior experience acts as a complete contrast to the plastic waste exterior; it is an organic world which engages all of the senses and highlights one of the Cape’s unique Biodiversity attributes; the immensity of the fragrant Fynbos family. This organic world metaphorically ‘grows’ out of the roof in the form of a ‘forest’ of bamboo poles which are secured at their bases and allowed to wave in the wind at the top announcing the pavilion by the gentle ‘clickety-clack’ of the poles connecting as they tap each other and reach skywards…”

We are delighted to announce the opening of this exhibition space. It's on time (TEL had 5 days in which to build and commission the entire structure) and thanks to the great team work between TEL, ST&AR Architects, the City of Cape Town's Green Goal Team, Sheryl Ozinsky, Fran Cox,  and the host of sub-contractors - it's looking even better than expected!

How was this stand built? Have a look at the images below detailing the building sequence on work, completed in 5 days:

Above: Note the interior is clad all round with a variety of alien timber sourced from within a two kilometer radius of the stand, in the City Bowl. The timber was sourced via alien clearing an pruning contract issued by the City of Cape Town as part of the cleaning-up efforts in the City prior to the Wold Cup. All of this rough-cut timber will be sold after the exhibition stand has been deconstructed

For more information on the project, please visit:

Above: The cover page of the Project Submission from TEL to the City of Cape Town