Published Article / The purpose of this paper is to argue that the quality of a Building graduate is not compromised by qualifying through the access programme route. This paper examines the statistics of the 2005 and 2006 access programme and mainstream National Diploma Building cohorts as well as the 2007 mainstream cohort. The study made use of descriptive research comprising quantitative data. The quantitative data was derived from statistics based on student performance that was downloaded from the Management Information System of the University of Johannesburg. The findings revealed that, although the access Building students enter the access programme with results below the minimum entrance requirements for the national diploma, their graduation rate is above or equal to that of their mainstream peers who gained entry directly into the national diploma. Furthermore, many of these students register for post-graduate studies once they start working. This study confirms that students who have received additional support in their first year of study and who have been 'enculturated' into the 'ways of doing' of construction and engineering during a four-year access diploma programme are not inferior to students who have completed a mainstream diploma in 3 years.

L'objectif de cette étude est de mettre en lumière, chez certains architectes, l'existence d'un type inédit de relation au passé, autorisant un type inédit de lecture de l'Histoire. Benjamin écrit: certains transmettent les choses en les rendant intangibles et en les conservant ; d'autres transmettent les situations en les rendant maniables et en les liquidant. Ce sont ces derniers que l'on appelle les destructeurs. Ainsi, nombre d'œuvres modernes à l'apparence austère ne résulteraient-elles pas d'un long processus de transformation jalonné de disparitions successives ? Je ferai l'hypothèse que certains architectes -dont Le Corbusier- s'insèrent dans ce paradoxe en mettant au point des techniques de projet qui ne relèvent ni d'une dialectique continuité-rupture, ni d'un travail sur la référence : j'appellerai transposition le travail consistant à se greffer sur la genèse d'un dispositif architectural pour l'accélérer, par l'actualisation exhaustive de ses modes d'existence. Car si Jeanneret se détache de la culture de son époque dès le Voyage d'Orient, c'est parce qu'il ne prend pas le dispositif architectural pour une entité inerte, extrapolable à souhait : il y reconnaît, au contraire, un objet technique susceptible de produire des effets à la manière d'une machine à perceptions. Son attitude consisterait dès lors à visiter la tradition, non pour extraire des références à usage projectuel, mais un savoir sur le pouvoir que possèdent certains objets de produire des effets. J'explorerai comment il met en place des techniques de projet, véritables manières de faire consistant à intervenir sur des types architecturaux consacrés pour produire des objets techniques concrets / The goal of the thesis is to bring out, in several architects, the existence of a different kind of relationship with the past, which authorizes a new kind of reading of history. Benjamin wrote: “some people transmit things by making them intangible and conserving them; other people transmit situations by making them handy and liquidating them. Last are those that are called destructives. In this way, several modern works, austere in appearance, could they not result from a long transformation process punctuated by successive disappearances ? My hypothesis is that some architects, such as Le Corbusier, choose to insert themselves in that paradox, producing project techniques which do not come under dialectics between continuity and interruption, nor under reference work: I will call transposition the work that consists in graft on the genesis of an architectural device to accelerate it by the exhaustive actualization of his modes of existence. If Jeanneret detaches from the culture of his time onwards since the Orient Trip it is because he does not consider the architectural device as an inert entity which can be extrapolated. He recognizes in it a technical object capable of producing effects as a perception machine. His attitude consists therefore in visiting tradition, not to extract references, but as knowledge about the power that some objects have to produce effects. I will explore how he invents project techniques which are real ways of doing, consisting on intervening on, established, architectural types to produce concrete, technical objects

In the stories of olden times and in those of our own American Indians, we learned of the picture writing of primitive peoples. It became an early method of recording people's thoughts. This was a very useful method at a time when the race was young. This in turn was the beginning of our alphabet, later the beginning of shaping letters into words, and then word into sentences and paragraphs. As our world has grown older, new idea have come into use and we are no longer content to live as our grandparents lived. We travel by fast express trains, high powered auto- mobiles, airplanes, or zeppelins. The radio gives us the news before our papers containing it are on the street. are not able to talk with people on the other side of the world. Business men find this a very valuable means of doing business when time means money. The motion pictures bring us the story of the book we have not had time to read and the characters from its pages talk to us from the screen. In short, we must have quicker ways of doing things.