Call number: LD2668 .P7 1973 M35

Policy rhetoric and the media portray Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a means to social and economic empowerment. The ubiquitous presence of mobile telephony and proliferation of digital networks imply a critical role for these technologies in overcoming the tyrannies and constraints of space. Academic literature draws from a range of disciplines but fails to address the significance of new technologies for African-, and South African cities. Debates on technologies and urban spaces reflect a Northern bias and case literature that dwells on the developmental aspects of ICT do not engage with the broader significance with regards to urban change in African cities. This research addresses these gaps by examining the metropolitan and local transformative qualities of ICT in a South African city, Durban. Three cases were selected. The first examined the city of Durban as place and policy space. Geographic data was used to analyse distribution of technology access. Perusal of policy documentation and newspaper articles together with open-ended interviews informed the analysis of ICT policy and discourse in relation to access. The second case tracked a process by which web sites were developed for 8 community organisations in marginalised places in Durban. This was an action research project where participant observation, interviews and focus groups were methods used to collect data. The third case was concerned with the ways in which technology is used by informal traders active in the city. Photography, interviews and focus groups comprised the methods used in this instance. Actor-network theory was used in all three cases in the analysis of the field work, uncovering material and human actors, network stabilisation processes and agency in determining the transformative potential of ICT at city and local scales. The distribution of ICT access in Durban was found to follow a spatial trajectory resembling historical patterns of investment and resource distribution. The inclusion of ICT policy on the municipal agenda has deepened the complexity of the local governance terrain. Digital Durban may be promoted as developmental but its transformative qualities are limited; its goals are aligned with the needs and agendas of a broad range of actors, not necessarily in support of inclusion. Network relations are determined by aligned strategic agendas as actors are enrolled into the actor-network through translation. A failed web development process showed that translation processes are core to stabilising network relations. Work with informal traders indicated that appropriation of technology is informed by livelihood strategies. Innovation is enabled when translation extends to appropriation. More in-depth research is needed on how technology is moulded and appropriated to suit livelihoods. Throughout the research the spatial dimensions of the relationship between ICT and networks were considered. The network spaces that emerge from actor relations do not correspond with the physical spaces usually considered in policy. Future work on these contradictions is necessary in order to provide insights into how more meaningful public intervention can be enabled; the true spaces of transformation.

In its aim to redress the inequalities of the past, the South African cities of today turned a blind eye to the urban, rural, natural & social needs of citizens. Our cities, as they stand today, reflect an urban form that is neither sustainable nor equitable. Our cities do not invest in social capital nor aim to react to the reality of diminishing recourses. They are not ‘civic in nature, pedestrian friendly, nor environmentally smart’. When did our cities become so unimportant and disconnected from society? Through this Research & Design Report it is explored whether South African cities (case study: Springs, Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa) can be transformed through retrofitting cities, building cities, making cities, unmaking cities, redeveloping cities, restructuring cities by placing the needs of citizens and nature first_ to inform urbanization, natural resources and the infrastructure that feeds it. It is examined here whether the answer could lie with the application of measured urbanization. It is within the measurement of these urban elements that the future of South African cities can be imagined, it is through the SMART application of these measured responses that broad based realistic and true change will be brought about; that the urban barriers of segregation, isolation & exclusion will be overcome.

Underpinning this architectural design and discourse is the exchange of digital and physical space. An exchange that can be multi-directional, rapidly shifting embodiments of space between modes of digital and physical models. The parameters for translation are defined by a digital culture in flux, perpetually evolving new mediums for building real and virtual space. A new direct link has been established between design and construction, where digital methods of conceptualisation, modification and fabrication are questioning the historic relationship between architecture and its production systems. Sited at the University of the Witwatersrand, this thesis explores architecture’s role as a mediator for digital and physical translation. By proposing an experimental stage for spatial exchange, the building facilitates the collaborative and interdisciplinary integration of students, academics, industry partners and public around the archiving, projecting, conceptualising and fabricating of digital model space. As a hybrid, the building reimagines the factory, studio, library and archive typologies, subsequently speculating a new contextual role for university architecture that is educational, industrial, cultural and public. As a by-product of an evolving digital culture, digitals models can be conceptualised, manipulated and embedded with intelligence. Advancing applications of virtual reality, however, free these digital models from conventional two-dimensional modes through immersive simulations that enable users to engage and interact with digital models of all scales. Furthermore, virtual projection mediums have the potential to transform how designers conceive, perceive and modify digital model space through the advent of intelligent sensor and tracking devices that allow human gestures to shape digital form. While digital models have traditionally been generated from nothing, new three-dimensional scanning technologies enable the capturing of small to large-scale physical space digitally. Finally, digital and robotic fabrication tools facilitate the shift from digital to real space by constructing physical objects with a greater complexity, speed, scale, affordability and material composition than previously possible. Comprised of a sequence of interconnected ‘fields’ – namely scanning, projection, studio and fabrication fields – the building facilitates the local and global exchange of digital and physical model space. As a platform for integrating all the constituents of spatial exchange, this design and discourse challenges traditional modes of praxis by speculating an alternative future for architecture, technology, education and greater society.

Thesis (M. Urban Design)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, 2013. / A user's guide to facilitate the healing of fractures and fissures in the urban fabic caused by colonial urban development and apartheid restructuring of towns in South Africa. I spent last December driving through parts of the Eastern Cape, and could not help but notice the beautiful character of the small colonial towns, Cathcart, Fort Beaufort, Alice, Bedford, Grahamstown, Adelaide and many more that litter the countryside. All of these towns have carefully planned urban layouts, consisting of masterfully crafted buildings set around public space. The church often forms the central piece , either along the high street or as the culmination at the end of the main corridor, other buildings are strategically placed and set out to respect certain parameters which in turn create and define public space and place. It all seems so simple, buildings, some of them hundreds of years old and still relevant in their environment today. The high street leads effortlessly through the centre of town and is fed by side streets crossing it, large old trees line the sidewalk and all the buildings face the street. There is a bustle in the streets, the traffic flows at an even pace, the sidewalks are filled with activity. Every type of store and building seems to fit, from “wheel alignment” to “ice-cream” parlour. Turning down the tree lined side streets, the commercial activity dies down slowly and is replaced by more suburban character, quaint houses set back from the street boundary but still facing the road, mostly low fences and garden walls presenting a sort of suburban utopia. Old schools are dotted around the suburb with rugby fields and clock towers proudly announcing their presence. Side walks are wide and well maintained, as one continues down the street, and seemingly reach the end of the small town, then forced back down a side street to the centre of town. Most of these towns only have one or two points of entry and exit: “in on the high street, and out again on the high street” As you leave the bustle of the high street it turns to a country road where cars and taxis speed, goats and cattle graze on the verge of the road and children play in green fields. The town is behind you and the open road beckons, then out of nowhere sprout sparsely spaced houses seemingly placed in fields of dust and stone. The road surface remains that of country road and the cars don't slow down, suddenly the houses and shacks are right up to the edge of the road. Dogs roam freely and children with mucus baked faces watch you go by, a donkey cart is pulled next to the road. You have just entered the second town or township the “native city” (King :1976, p.18) . The township seems disorganised, the smell of open fires is in the air, only black faces stare back and a different world greets you. Plastic bags and paper rubble rides on the wind. The world of the poor plays out here, the only civic buildings clearly visible are the police station with its torn and tattered flag, and a dusty school with broken windows. Can this be the same town with the same citizens or is it a whole new country separated from its source by a few kilometres? It seems, the two towns developed totally separately within a couple of kilometres of one another. South Africa has a long history of separateness. With democracy came the promise of togetherness and integration, yet almost twenty years after liberation these towns seem even more separate, and the lack of integration is clear, the gap is growing. The old colonial town, although well preserved, has stagnated. The native city is swelling, rolling, sprawling along the hills, this periphery town has become a city in crisis. How did this happen, and can the periphery be integrated with the whole?

Movement between spaces ordinarily creates an in-between place in space, a place which is neither the precise place of departure nor the precise place of arrival, but is related to both. This generates another re- ality, a short-lived, momentary transitional place. Every day people travel great distances from one edge of the city to another by means of public transportation. We move through spaces such as airports, train and bus stations which exist as purely transitional spaces, and ironically many of these environments have certain emptiness about them even though there is a large convergence of people that come through these spaces on a daily basis. This thesis presents an architectural proposal that addresses the issues of transitional locations, by identifying the architectural possibilities within a liminal context. I investigate how architecture and infrastructure can be integrated by allowing for programmatic hybridization in a South African urban context of the Johannesburg inner city. I propose a multimodal transit station where different modes of public transport intersect. The site is the existing Westgate station in the south western corner of the inner city of Johannesburg. The objectives of the building are to facilitate the functional aims of a multimodal transit station, to establish the station as a destination and to enable connection and exchange between different people. These are achieved by upgrading the existing public transport facilities and introducing educational, commercial, and recreational functions This architectural exploration aims to enrich public life in transitional spac- es of urban settings. Many of the challenges associated with the typolo- gy of transit, including the sense of void and isolation that comes with mobility nodes that act as merely a transit zone, are addressed through the integration of mixed programmes that will enhance public space and create opportunity to linger. The aim is to provide an attractive and lively pedestrian environment starting at the transit station to make the experi- ence of arrival and being in the area a satisfying one.

This document is submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree: Master of Architecture [Professional] At the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, in the year 2016 / Sound, in the form of speech and song was celebrated in all preliterate societies. Oral history has recently come back into prominence, with the realisation that it can be more inclusive than traditional academic history and contribute to a shared experience within a group. In Post-Apartheid South Africa it played an important role in the TRC hearings. Organisations such as StoryCorps, have discovered the important therapeutic value gained by the sharing of stories between individuals and groups. The Speak Memory Oral History Centre aims to encourage historians to engage with oral history as a medium for memory recollection and to create a body of populist oral history testimonies. Oral history deals with memory and so the relationship between architecture and memory was investigated, with a particular focus on the neurological mechanisms involved in memory. An approach to the design of an Oral History Centre used these neurological mechanisms as design tools for a building that would facilitate the recording and recall of memory. / EM2017

Climate change poses serious challenges to households in informal settlements located in marginal areas such as flood plains that are sensitive to extreme weather events. This thesis explores the complex interrelationship between climate variability and informal settlements using two city-level case studies in Johannesburg, viz., Msawawa and Freedom Charter Square. The main objective of this study was to establish the nature of household adaptive capacity in informal settlements in relation to climate change. This entailed assessing household vulnerability to the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as strong winds, extreme cold, extreme heat, floods, drought and fire, as a basis from which to understand household adaptive capacity. Methodologically, the thesis applied a mixed method approach combining quantitative and qualitative instruments to explore household adaptive capacity in relation to climate change. This methodology was used to understand how households have coped and adapted to extreme weather events in the past. Secondary research involved analysing a range of published and unpublished documents, while the primary research component consisted of a survey of two hundred households across the two settlements as well as key-informant interviews with local leaders in the two informal settlements and relevant officials from the City of Johannesburg. The results of this study show that in Msawawa and Freedom Charter Square, households’ social and economic conditions such as those relating to employment, income, assets and health play a role in their vulnerability to climate change. The ability of households to improve their adaptive capacity is influenced by a range of factors that include access to physical capital, social capital, financial resources and governance. The research found that households in the two informal settlements rely mainly on coping mechanisms such as repairing their shacks after disasters related to extreme weather. They have very limited ability to address underlying causes of vulnerability such as weak dwellings. Social capital is one of the drivers, although not very significant, for coping and critical to efforts for improving household adaptive capacity. The study also found that governance is a contested terrain in which it is difficult to recognise a positive impact on household adaptation to climate change. The study highlights the importance for policy-makers to recognise the need to improve household socio-economic conditions as well as building relationships of trust as drivers that could help in improving adaptive capacity and addressing household vulnerability to climate change.

A green palisade fence is not all that separates the urban, kinetic Braamfontein from it’s dormant cemetery. It’s a long-standing perception that the two spaces are not related despite their proximity. And for this reason, you too have likely driven past it’s sixty metre long edge without having given it too much acknowledgement. Granted, it’s easier to overlook a space supposedly devoid of rational markers from their neighbours because of rhythmic disturbance in function and social experience or even their inability to mirror their adjacent counterparts: a derelict building, a desolate parking lot in the evening, a twenty one hectare cemetery in a city. However, what makes the green, park-like Braamfontein Cemetery different from any other in Johannesburg is that it was the first cemetery in the city. As a result, is the final resting place of significant contributors of the country’s history. It is then, currently a commemorative landscape in which events, social and burial practices of Johannesburg and South Africa are recorded. For this reason, one could say that this cemetery is very much a part of urban Braamfontein in 2014. How then to negotiate the de-alienation of this remarkable space while preserving its beauty.

The built environment is a product of man’s rationales and understandings of space. It is on the basis of these understandings that man builds, to facilitate his ways of life. These “understandings”, are the discourses that each individual is born into and the “ways of life” are the cultural practices resulting from these discourses. Architecture being a product of cultural discourse is intended to facilitate cultural practices. Post 1994 South Africa, has inherited a Johannesburg inner-city built environment, which is predominantly a product of apartheid and colonial discourse. During this era, black people were marginalised and excluded from the inner city, both physically and through architectural representation. The inner city was built in accordance with western (white) discourse to facilitate western cultural practices. Today the inner city is predominantly inhabited by black people, who were excluded and marginalised in its conception. Post colonial theorists assert that, while black people have embraced “modernity” and “western urbanity”, it has not resulted in a complete acceptance or appropriation of western cultural practices and discourses. Due a process termed “post colonial hybridity” these people merge the two seemingly irreconcilable cultural discourses and practices to form new cultural hybrids. The consequence of hybridity in the inner-city is; while the appropriated western cultural practices and discourses are inherently reflected and catered for, the retained aspects of black cultural practice and discourse remain marginalised. The built environment, which is meant to facilitate and reflect, negates and marginalises aspects of black discourses and cultural practices. “To be truly expressive, a building should grow out of its natural, social, and civilization context. It should reflect not only the personal values, needs and interests of its dwellers but also its relation to its natural and architectural site. Thus the formal organization of a building cannot be imposed on a people from the outside; it should originate from the context of human life in the given region. In this origination the process of spatial articulation results from a thought- full grasp of the dynamic interaction between the material elements of the architectural work and the human vision which guides this activity.” (Mitias 1994:103) In order to make a contribution to the creation of a more inclusive built environment this paper proposes the development of a hybrid building prototype that would facilitate and reflect the hybrid cultural practices and discourses of the city’s black inhabitants. The building prototype named the “Inner City Ritual Centre” aims to facilitate some of the marginalised practices of black people living in the city and to reflect some of the excluded spatial understandings of black people. The paper proposes a method of practice that utilises postcolonial hybridity, to include excluded and marginalised practices and discourses into the architectural representation of the city. This paper uncovers and highlights a few of these discourses and practices and demonstrates how the use of postcolonial hybridity in architecture would result in a more inclusive built environment.