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Urban ritual: a hydro-ritual space for the communities of the inner cityAserman, Samantha Lee January 2016 (has links)
Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree: Master of Architecture (Professional) to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2016 / The heritage and history of a city is often based on urban legend. These
stories pertain the cultural rooting of the society that had lived within the
cities from their founding and until today. Johannesburg or Egoli appears to
have skipped this cultural rooting and instead stems from the political and
commercial soil of the gold mines.
If we excavate into the gold mining history of the city – and even into the
history preceding it - we can find the hidden sacred and cultural beginnings
embedded in our society today. Our society has been formed on the continual
evolution of the ideas of the sacred and profane through practices of
incorporation, salvation and adaptation.
As the gold mines in the city shut down, in 1940, the migrant labourers were left
in hostels in an unfamiliar terrain and little means to make a living (Potenze,
2015). This means that today, we can still find evidence of the importance
of sacred rituals similar to those in the mining compounds. Religions and
cultures in Johannesburg, that have been gradually changed overtime, are
a result of the incorporation of mining labour, urban customs and western
ideas (including religion and technologies). Although the city has clearly
harmed the rural traditions, we can still see glimpses of the endurance of the
sacred within the profane landscape. The profane is adapted by the different
communities in the inner city – as will be discussed with reference to the
Mai Mai and Shembe (Nazareth Baptist Church) communities – to express
their cultures of the sacred, traditional and religious and to accommodate
for ritual practices associated with them.
Today’s societies of the inner city are a mix of cultures, religions, God, the
ancestors and ritual practices - both sacred and profane. By learning from
the way in which these communities continually evolved to incorporate their
environments into their traditions, the city too must now incorporate these
communities and their beliefs into its structure. If this is achieved, it could
ignite a healing process through integration as opposed to replacement or
removal of elements of the city or of its society.
This report explores ideas of the importance of religion and culture in
Johannesburg’s context. As it is an architectural analysis, the response will
be a proposal for religious infrastructure and space within the area of City
and Suburban, alongside the Kwa Mai Mai market and the gathering spaces
of the Shembe / Nazareth Baptist Church. This will promote and retain the
cultures, traditions and religions that were brought to the city and used as a
tool of survival. / MT2017
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The new public: a campus of exchange at Park StationTyler, Julie-Ann 13 July 2016 (has links)
This thesis is submitted to the School of Architecture and Planning, University of the
Witwatersrand in fulfillment of the requirements for the Masters of Architecture (Professional) / This thesis, entitled ‘The New Public’, aims to
investigate the role of public space and civic
architecture in the information age. Specifically,
examining the role of design in facilitating
multiple different forms of public life as well
as challenging the current approaches to
pedestrian movement within the city.
The design approach was to create a campus
containing a new public space and a hybrid civic
building which together allow for spaces that
facilitate new forms of public engagement. The
aim of this campus is to create public spaces
which host many different forms of public life
and allow for mixing and exchange.
The thesis is grounded in the context of 21st
century Johannesburg, a city which brands
itself a ‘world-class African city’ and whose
vision is to be a city that provides real quality of
life for all its citizens.
However, while the current spatial policies strive
to build a collective and shared vision for the
future of Johannesburg, the city still plagued
by a past based on segregation and inequality.
What this has left us with is a bifurcated
public environment. A spatial condition further
impaired by the currently strongly dived public
and quasi-public transport systems.
I have therfore chosen to site my project in
a space within the city which encompasses
these issues: The Park Station precinct,
Johannesburg.
The research component of this thesis aims to
unpack the factors which have led to a change
in the culture of use of the public realm both
globally and locally. I also investigate how
Johannesburg’s past and current planning
strategies created spaces that contain a ‘legacy
of separation’. Lastly the research extends to
the relationship between public transport and
public space and the effect of transit oriented
design (TOD) approaches on public life.
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Social fiction: an imaginary journey through the Alexandra-Sandton corridor: temporarily subverting everyday acceptanceWilkinson, Zizke Rolenda January 2017 (has links)
Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Architecture (Professional) to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017 / ABSTRACT
The aim of this dissertation is to explore alternative ways of looking at architecture through the use of theory, the type of theory, alternative building programme development, representing architecture and how architecture is implemented. By doing so, an intervention is designed to expose various social truths, stimulating self reflection and
adding value to the Alexandra-Sandton corridor context. This research project utilises the spirit of carnivals as subversive and radical events to change a community’s behaviour. This dissertation explores Bakhtin’s
theory of the “carnivalesque”. This theory was used as the
theoretical framework based on four characteristics. Throughout the
research process these are used to analyse site context and create an
intervention. The four carnivalesque characteristics are:
- Usurping of hierarchies;
- Pushing taboos;
- Unusual connections;
- Eccentric behaviour.
The social inequalities along the Alexandra-Sandton corridor are broken down into every day activities and juxtaposed to amplify and expose hidden rules that we have come to accept in Johannesburg. The intervention acts as a commentary on the future connection of the two contrasting communities for spectacle and self reflection, transcending the everyday experience into a surreal playground through virtual reality and other means. Architecturally, Social Fiction has three main design strands
1. Theoretical exploration;
2. Architecture as emotional stimulus;
3. Virtual reality as fictional representation.
Social Fiction is a project that bridges architecture, politics, socioeconomics and philosophy, using the medium of virtual reality and
comic book fantasy as an open and accessible way, challenging the
traditional plan, section elevation as a means of communication. / GR2017
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"For The Enjoyment of All:" Cosmopolitan Aspirations, Urban Encounters and Class Boundaries in Mexico CityLeal Martínez, Alejandra M. January 2011 (has links)
This dissertation examines the production and experience of class and racial distinctions in contemporary Mexico City by focusing on encounter and proximity between different social groups in the country's most emblematic urban center. It draws on eighteenth months of ethnographic fieldwork with artists and young professionals living in the city's historic center as part of a public-private redevelopment plan locally known as the "rescue." Led by multimillionaire Carlos Slim, this endeavor has been framed as an initiative of civil society to recover the symbolic heart of the nation from crime and illegality while transforming it into a secure and livable space for all Mexicans. The rescue mobilizes a neoliberal idiom of the modern (associated in Mexico and across the world with democracy and responsible citizenship, a retreating state and a free market economy) and epitomizes the illegibility of public and private distinctions. I focus on moments of encounter between the historic center's new affluent residents, on the one hand, and the inhabitants of its dilapidated tenements and the vendors of its informal street markets, on the other. Such encounters slide into suspicion, uncertainty, instability and misrecognition. In focusing on encounter I trace new residents' desire for commonality, for an "all of us" in the historic center (a recognition as urban dwellers or as fellow citizens), and their anxieties about the very possibility of this commonality. Such situated fears, I argue, articulate with longstanding elite apprehensions in Mexico about the popular masses, historically construed as the embodiment of the national subject and at the same time as the manifestation of atavistic residues. In the discourses and practices of different agents of rescue (new residents, the police, private investors and state officials) these masses figure at once as subjects to be redeemed and as plainly irredeemable others, unfit for the requirements of modern democratic citizenship. The dissertation thus traces relations between new residents' quotidian fears of crime and violence in the socially mixed spaces of the historic center on the one hand, and contemporary debates and anxieties over liberal democracy, citizenship and social belonging, on the other.
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The urban experience at Hartsfield AirportHeins, Matthew William 12 1900 (has links)
No description available.
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Surreal city escape: discovering escapism within the unaccommodating Johannesburg city fabricGhisleni, Carina 12 May 2015 (has links)
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.
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Thank you for slowing down: Slow down. Sit still. Clear your mind. At the Urban Meditation Time MachinePappas, Stephen Nicholas January 2017 (has links)
Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Architecture (Professional) to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017 / This research report intends to illuminate the effect of how we can slow down, clear our minds and come to a complete standstill in extremely fast cities. To apprehend these effects the investigation focuses contextually, around the eastern edge of Newtown Johannesburg. This site is juxtaposed within the intensity of major transport nodes. We are living in a world that is accelerating at a frightening pace, and people are not keeping up - there is very little time in one’s day to escape the rapidity, acquire peace of mind and absorb the present moment. This research report acts as a precedent for how future utopian cities can host a space that encourages a meditative-lifestyle of slowing down.
I unfold three theories to help support my investigation; Lieven de Cauter’s theory on capsularisation tells us how man has turned to ‘hyper-individualisation’, closing himself off from the world and creating social barriers. The second theory I look at is non-places by Marc Augé who talks about the in between places we pass through such as petrol stations, bus stops, terminals, etcetera, and how these transient spaces have become more meaningful because one is spending more time in them due to technological advancement. I label these as delayed spaces in my thesis which is the third theory I look at by Fardjadi and Mostafavi. I engage with these last two theories by doing an evaluation on them; these include multi-faith spaces, petrol stations, bus stops, terminals and launderettes. I do so because these are spaces where people slow down and pass through within an ordinary day. I suggest how these activities, that are normally considered mundane, can be transcended through different opportunities to slow down through a meditative life-style. Within each evaluation particular lessons are acquired that are integrated in the overall building design.
At one point in the research report I take a time-out from the design process to question the value of slow architecture. Much of the working world as well as universities have an uncomfortable urgency when it comes to design. There is no time to reflect on mistakes made or gain perspective on the process which leads to quick decisions without much thought, and often lack in creative depth or meaning. I touch on my own design process and thinking as an example to explain why it is important to slow down and review what has been done to be able to move forward with clear direction.
In terms of the architecture for my research report, two specific concepts are unravelled; the first one is movement - how one approaches the building as well as the circulation within it. I used the labyrinth and the notion of time-frames to support this idea of slowing down from speed to stillness which determined my program. The second concept is the ‘consciousness capsules’ which host the main meditative spaces and activities in the building. These activities make up the program and they include a multi-functional gathering space, a communal library to learn about meditation and its philosophy, hand-craft workshops (such as painting, quilting and basket weaving), meditation rooms, collective yoga, a dormitory, and finally a public garden terrace at the very top accompanied by a walking labyrinth. The whole journey through the building portrays a ‘stairway to heaven’ and provides an overview of the city that allows for one to escape the bustle and re-collect ones’ thoughts and immerse in the present moment - as nothing is more urgent today than slowing down. / GR2017
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The Body on the Threshold: Histories of Rape in Colonial North IndiaShenoy, Niyati January 2024 (has links)
‘The Body on the Threshold: Histories of Rape in Colonial North India’ analyzes political, judicial, and diplomatic records of sexual violence in the modern Indian provinces of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh from roughly 1820 onward. I explore these colonial archives to reappraise the problem of rape in modern India and how it has come to be conceived and misconceived spatially.
With the colonial emergence of India’s contemporary legal and penal system, I argue, a new criminal law of rape transformed public space—local roads, forests, village fields and pastures, railway carriages, and town streets—into constitutively dangerous and exclusionary space, about which a perverse cultural and political consensus prevailed that nothing could be done except that women and girls fear and avoid such space when possible. This notorious and longstanding exclusionary injunction upon mobilities and freedoms in modern Indian social life is a gendered common-sense, and structuring of the commons, that I aim to defamiliarize.
As a new, ostensibly ‘decolonized’ criminal code with a restructured rape law comes into force in India this year, I offer a cautionary obituary for the law it replaced, and the past India seeks to leave behind.Bringing a combination of spatial, socio-legal, and micro-historical approaches to bear upon colonial judicial archives, I work tangentially to their central object: the criminal court proceeding. To explore how the jurispathic incentives of colonial criminal law engendered unsafe public environments, I work to pull the concept of rape out of the silo imposed by these court proceedings, which reflect the epistemic distortions of a regime that narrowly prioritized punishing only brutally violent rape upon victims below the age of consent—setting evidentiary precedents that affected the governing of rape in much of the British Empire.
Employing sources such as crime reports, police handbooks, diplomatic letters, and native newspapers, I focus on instances of what might be referred to today as ‘stranger rape’: rape committed in ‘public’, often brazenly, at the margins of political conflicts over sovereign power and direct rule, such as border wars, princely revolts, and cattle-smuggling feuds. I recruit histories of short-distance migration and the public/private circulation of women within the marriage system, among others, to counter assumptions about South Asian women’s inherent immobility and seclusion.
I also index emerging procedural and forensic technologies of the colonized Indian body politic—which reinforced an understanding of rape survivors as unreliable, and of most rape accusations as fabricated—to local ideas about public safety and state responsibility, which were often premised on caste-differentiated and retributive ethics of justice. I trace how pre-colonial practices of social exclusion, scapegoating, and outcasting—and the complex dispute-resolution systems that mandated such punishments—were absorbed into an ecology of colonial violence and territorial occupation, attempting to emplace the evolving meaning of rape within broader transformations in politics and social life under colonialism. I argue that the authority to sanction rape—to both punish and prescribe—became foundational to jurisdictional and territorial conflicts between propertied castes, local power-holders, and functionaries of the British Indian colonial state.
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Sustainable development of parks: investigating the trade-offs in the conflicting development process of parks: the case of the Mshenguville Park, SowetoMkhomazi, Zethuzonke Bella January 2017 (has links)
Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree Master of Science in Development Planning to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017 / A sustainable approach to development brings together social, economic and environmental aspects. However this does not occur in a vacuum, development decisions take place in a palimpsest of underlying decisions and a myriad of conflicting uses and tensions. The sustainable development of parks entails making trade-offs within a conflicting environment. This study reflects on officials’ practices in the processes of park developments. It evaluates the decision-making terrain for park developments to understand the challenges, the advantages and the limitations in achieving an integrated and sustainable park. To this end, I have reviewed JCPZ (Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo) officials’ practices in the park development of an urban wetland in Mshenguville, Soweto. The methodology used for this paper is mainly the case study approach and reviewing archival documents used for the development process. What makes this case study interesting is that this park has some contested, proposed and appropriated land uses such as golf, cattle grazing, and an eco-park. The research report mainly shows that a balance or win-win approach to development is not easy to attain especially in highly contested developments but rather a compromise can be reached provided that the other forces ( stakeholders) within the sustainability triangle (particularly social, economic and environmental) persistantly negotiate their space to be included in the development plan. / XL2018
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Bicycle plant- A bicycle factory for Olympia Park in the heart of SpringsBotha, Frederik Hendrik 07 October 2014 (has links)
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 2013. / This design intervention takes place in the Olympia Park sports precinct in the town of
Springs. Here, unique contextual conditions have informed the development of a Hybrid
typology between industry and Public Park. A bicycle factory is proposed along with bicycle
transport infrastructure that is implemented on an urban level. This intervention is aimed at
creating an interface between the community and the existing, dilapidated sports and
recreation facilities that exist within the precinct. Industriality is an important part of the ecosystemic
organism called Springs. The new typology questions the notion that ““the harmony
of natural landscapes as embodied in songs or poems, cannot be reconciled with the brutality
and pollutant image of industriality” (Corner, [video] 2009). By using contextual elements, a
design language and programmatic response emerges that could satisfy these criteria.
The park by its very nature is a landscape that embodies a spirit of relaxation and relief. By
using earth as a spatial device or building material, it is possible to integrate that spirit, and
literally the park, into the building. James Corner, Landscape architect of the New York
Highline Park says that; “The harmony of natural landscapes as embodied in songs or poems,
cannot be reconciled with the brutality and pollutant image of industriality” (Corner, [video]
2009). The park and the industrial are two completely different bodies of thought. But by using
the landscape in all its green glory as a foundation for and industrial building, one creates a
condition where both these elements are overlapping in an effort to survive and thrive. The
park typology signifies a desire to experience a specific kind of environment. By using
landscape to soften the interface of the hard industrial aesthetic, the factory is absorbed into
the romantic image normally associated with landscape.
However, conceiving landscapes purely pictorially does have limitations. The imperative is to
overlay a new layer of activity onto a landscape. By placing the factory and the bicycle
infrastructure in the un-programmed park, you are creating a pragmatic and technical
landscape. The design is therefore not conceived in a pictorial way, but in a productive and
functional way. Scripting activities in the park does not force a specific set of activities but
allows the user to have a subjective and interpretative experience. This will consequently also
have a catalysing effect for new layers of activity to be imported through the passage of time.
It is therefore not a concluding intervention but part of the process of progress and growth; or
an engine for process.
The design is conceived as a mechanical tree. The power of this metaphor lies in the fact that
both a tree and a machine are process based. There is no climax state for the tree, only a
useful life span. Similarly, the machine is made to be completed, but to be used. Its function is
a process, like producing something and doing so continuously. Viewing cities and buildings
as process driven organisms should be integrated into our perceptions of industry and
sustainable environments.
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