This document is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree: Master of Architecture (Professional) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, in the year 2014. / This thesis explores theories of escapism and applies them to the Johannesburg precinct in the form of a socially interactive public space. Our day to day banal realities do not satisfy our innermost desires, as a result; we choose to disconnect from our realties. We often become passive consumers in a world dominated by production, fuelled by retail advertising and marketing media, and in turn we frequently overlook the shaping of our own social existence and choosing healthy forms of flight. I feel that our city does not provide opportunities for escape in the form of urban rituals and therefore a sense of belonging is inadequately specified. I aim to provide a positive form of escape which supports urban rituals, and thereby define a place within Johannesburg. A public space enables social interaction and individual exploration and is therefore a temporary from of escape. Our city is often perceived as dangerous and unaccommodating, but there is vast opportunity within the precinct due to the many existing connections and vibrant pedestrian life. My chosen site is an existing heritage building and the active node, Gandhi Square, currently existing divided by a sprawl of busses through which pedestrians are forced to navigate through. Through the redesign of this space, I intend to encourage a pedestrian dominant city, and a civic space that enhances public life and further facilitates urban renewal. My intervention involves 3 elements; an outdoor theatre, the redesign of the Metro Bus facility and a public space to promote a harmonious transition zone between the two. The contemporary theatre I am proposing forms space without physical walls, as light and sound evolve to stage events. The theatre functions within the reshaping of an existing heritage building located on site. It is a flexible space where intense sensory events can occur and carve the avenues into a socially interactive city. This engaging atmosphere caters for the collective as well as the everyday encounter, transforming to the needs of Johannesburg. My intervention will define a place where the celebration of community is lacking and in turn seek to change the perceptions of our city. Through the experience of the whole, my design facilitates chance interactions in which mystical moments can be manifested within a public space devoted to civic escape.

M.Tech. (Fine Art) / The focus of this research is an exploration of aspects of liminality and how it manifests in selected unsanctioned public art interventions in ‘urban places’, specifically, the Johannesburg Central Business District. Liminality informs my own art work and to contextualise my practice I investigate Steven Cohen’s performance/intervention entitled Chandelier (2001-2002), and Alison Kearney’s The Portable Hawkers Museum (2003). I argue that unsanctioned public art maintains a liminal identity, a fluidity of ‘repurposing a space’ that is in constant shift between different dimensions of liminality. Such works create a zone between physical and conceptual space, challenging the relationships between people and places, the artist and the audience. Liminal spaces (such as the underside of bridges for example) provide the platform for new mediation to happen outside of the normal social structures. Homi Bhabha (1994:54) refers to this as a “third space” where transformation may occur, and it is this transformation of space and experience that I aim to explore in my work. In my practical component I present a body of unsanctioned public art interventions consisting of ceramic sculptures placed in urban liminal spaces in Johannesburg. I populate the chosen spaces with imaginative objects that playfully reflect my own cultural hybridity, and resultant liminal existence, in a post-colonial urban society. My practical work thus draws on analyses of the liminal aspects of Cohen and Kearney’s works as well as on aspects of my hybrid existence arising from my status as an immigrant in Johannesburg. Through my art works I attempt to engage with the local inhabitants without the restrictions of institutionalised arenas, allowing for a new experience of both the space and the artwork. Finally I record my own interventions in detail and compile an annotated photographic catalogue to document the sculptures in situ and the ephemeral life span of these unsanctioned public art interventions.