Man’s relationship with architecture is not intellectual, but associated with our emotive subconscious. The quality of space, as defined by architecture, is personified and evaluated through the experience it orchestrates. The investigation aims to uncover the process of choreographing emotive experiences through design. These pertain to the writings of renowned Swiss architect, Peter Zumthor, who manages to design evocative spaces, architecture that embodies definite atmospheres. Zumthor explains in his manifesto Thinking Architecture, that atmosphere is measured through man’s emotional sensibility, rendering experience and emotion as tools for designing spatial quality. Architecture is not abstract, but concrete matter, an assemblage of quantifiable substance, and thus, the architectural palette exists within emotion. Beyond its physicality, architectural elements embody sensory potential in its application, arrangements and composition. The architect orchestrates the infinite architectural palette to provoke the senses, which defines experience. Finnish architect, Juhani Pallasmaa, better known for his writings on architecture and the senses, writes extensively on the non-cognitive realm of architecture as experienced, not only through the traditional senses measured by sight, sound, smell, touch and taste, but includes the human body in its dimensionality as it relates to its surroundings, ergonomically and spatially. The architectural premise lead to an investigation into the lost landscape of Pretoria’s Central Business district, where spatial and material degradation have abandoned various sites in hostility. The forsaken lot on the corner of Pretorius and Sophie de Bruyn Streets, currently offers its users, the South African National Police Service (SAPS), nothing more than a parking space. The vastness of emotion in which the architectural palette exists, focused the exploration on a specific emotion as derived from the users of the identified, abandoned lot. As a result of a media-generated perception, members of the SAPS have been alienated by society. Alienation, translated into architectural terms, means ‘to be outside’. The architecture is informed by the contrasting experiential conditions of alienation and belonging, outside and inside, danger and safety, chaos and cosmos. The architecture becomes the transitional medium. The Inner City Police Retreat fills the empirical void in a series of orchestrated experiences, in an attempt to inspire and transform the day to day existence of its users. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

This dissertation aims to address actual needs/issues identified within Pretoria. The Berea Park precinct has become a proverbial rotten apple. The negative connotations linked to this site are tainting the image of the area. It is also having a negative effect on the safety and social grain of the neighbourhood. The neglect and vandalism that Berea Park has suffered can in part be contributed to a lack of ownership accountability. To address this, an appropriate, relatable architectural intervention is required. The theory of “Belonging” is explored as an approach to inspire the appropriation of Berea Park. The theory is based on the premise that architecture is informed by the activities that occur within the spaces. This is partially because the activities associated with a space contribute to the identity we attach to this specific space. Identity becomes particularly important when working with a site with such a rich heritage, a site that has featured extensively in the development of Pretoria’s sport and recreational scene. Both the tangible and intangible heritage of the site should play an imperative role in informing the new design. The intention is to regenerate Berea Park by means of small scale interventions. This is done by inserting activity and ritual driven architecture into the existing fabric of Berea Park. The tangible and intangible heritage of Berea Park act as guiding grids that inform the arrangement of these interventions. Design is further informed by the fact that sport is still actively being practised at this damaged, dilapidated site. This clearly reflects the need for publicly accessible sports facilities within Pretoria. Sensitive interaction between the new and the existing architecture is required. To achieve this a contrast between old and new is created to ensure that both are celebrated and clearly distinguishable. The current structural grid and planning are offset by a strict set of zones that run horizontally across the site. These zones become lightweight steel boxes that either fit into the existing, stereotomic building envelope or extend out towards the sport fields. Ideally the architectural intervention will strengthen the relationship between architecture and users. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

Places designed for the elderly tend be stigmatising, which is predicated in its medical engineering background. The institutional nature of these places accelerates decline as it negatively impacts on the health of its residents, physically and psychologically disabling them. Spaces that support the wellbeing of residents can be identified by the presence of three characteristics: a sense of control over ones environment, a sense of access to social support and access to positive distraction. Huis Davidtsz is a frail care facility, located just west of Pretoria’s central business district, which has housed elderly people since 1968. The interior environment of Huis Davidtsz is dull and disabling and for this reason is selected as site for design intervention. In order to re-design Huis Davidtsz into a psychologically supportive environment the aforementioned characteristics of supportive space are translated into architectural design. Four elements of architectural space: floor, wall, ceiling and window, are manipulated to create an intimacy gradient. This gradient humanises the institution by establishing a range of spaces and a sense of territoriality. The unforgiving threshold between intimate and public space is moderated by subtle spatial indications of levels of intimacy. This provides Huis Davidtsz with the seven levels of intimacy associated with domestic spaces, enabling individuality and choice. The result is a comfortable and secure place for living. / Dissertation MInt(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MInt(Prof) / Unrestricted

Low learner performance is one of the greatest challenges that confront South Africans in this post-apartheid era. Despite valiant efforts on the government’s part to improve the education system every year, successful learners are not coming through the ranks in sufficient numbers. In the case of Atteridgeville, an old township near the Pretoria Central Business District, the phenomenon of low learner performance is reflected in the quality of schoolyards and the behavior of learners. Schoolyards are degraded, learners lack confidence, they are not enthusiastic about their schools, they do not interact with the communities around their schools, and they do not venture into the physical landscape outside their schools. The question arises whether the landscape outside the classroom is not, in fact, contributing to the problem. If this is so then a way must be found to manipulate the landscape so that obstacles to learner performance are removed and learning is facilitated. This thesis explores the notion that the outdoor landscape in Atteridgeville can play a role in helping learners reach their potential. Therefore Atteridgeville will be the departure point for the investigation. The investigation will result in a project location which will be further investigated to identify its inherent opportunities and constraints. The design response to these opportunities and constraints, coupled with both theoretical and conceptual backing, will inform the project at master plan and detail design level. Methods must be found to unlock the didactic and experiential potential of the schoolyard and surrounding landscape in a township where open green spaces are under threat and physical and social obstacles to learner performance exist. / Dissertation ML(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / ML(Prof) / Unrestricted

In the contemporary built-environment the focus is very much on environmentally conscious design or so-called ‘sustainable’ design- or even the generic labelled ‘green’ architecture. Despite this popular and supposedly informed preoccupation with the importance of the role of ecology in architecture, ‘green’ architecture is usually fixated on energy efficiency within the envelope of an individual building. This dissertation questions this limited, and often artificial and technologically driven, relationship between man and ecology. Fundamentally it questions the role of architecture as negotiator in this relationship. The author proposes an alternative way of viewing ecologically conscious architecture, where the intent of the architectural intervention is to respond directly to a given environmental issue and where its existential impact relates to its surrounding situation and the tension between man and ecology existing within the landscape, instead of turning its focus inwards to achieve isolated ‘environmental’ efficiency. Examples of such a specific issue, context and program with a collective goal of achieving these aims are hence forth elaborated on in the content of this dissertation. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

An oppressor-oppressed nature exists between adults and children. Children are not considered as individuals in the planning of cities but are rather treated as universal, homogenous beings. Their rights as competent social actors are confiscated until they are deemed competent according to adult standards. Unable to represent themselves, they are given sterile child spaces by adults, who are too conditioned to be able to appropriately represent them. Paranoia for child safety results in confined, rather than alert and surveyed spaces with carefully treated edges. Current child spaces are made to condition children with the rules that will result in their ability to be adequate and well functioning adults. They are treated as pre-adults, rather than as children - beings already adequate as themselves and not tending towards adequacy. The dissertation will deal with the dissolving of boundaries and control brought on by confined child spaces in the form of an inner-city primary school. The Museum Precinct part of the city presents itself as rich adult-biased and educational environment in which to house children. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the legacy of industrial spaces, the effect of this legacy on the surroundings, and how these spaces then become disconnected and isolated after industrial activity is decommissioned. The research forms part of an NRF research scheme that specifically focuses on building the resilience of cities through innovation in the planning, design and construction of the built environment. The hypothesis on which the dissertation is based states that a process of reintegration of a decommissioned industrial site with the immediate surroundings would enable such a site to become a positive space of transition, and would allow for the reconciliation of society and the ecology that was exploited by the industry. It sees the decommissioning of industrial infrastructure not as a loss or abandonment of obsolete capital, but as the release of energy and potential that can be positively reconstructed. The mechanistic and reductionist world-view that contributed to an unhealthy relationship between people and their ecological surroundings is theoretically explored through the hybridization theories proposed by Bruno Latour (Latour 1993), and the regenerative methodologies put forth by members of Regenesis (Mang, Reed 2012a). The potential of obsolete industrial infrastructure to provide powerful leverage points for changing paradigms from mechanistic to ecological is discussed in the light of its history of developing from craft to large-scale production. Craft becomes an important mechanism for the integration of people with the value and purpose of their work, and also of natural materials and the cultural objects they become. The theories stated above are architecturally applied to an industrial site in Eersterust, Pretoria, which is on the verge of being decommissioned. The site is approached as a constantly evolving and living entity. It is investigated in terms of its patterns and cycles, and these are illustrated as a narrative of all the forces that have impacted on it over millions of years. The narrative provides clues as to possible programmes and site lifecycles, and enables those phenomena that will nurture the biophysical evolution of the site to be given form. The concept of potential sets arises from this investigation, and informs an architecture that aligns itself with both the ecological and cultural forces on site, and represents the hybridization of the two. Potential sets distinguish patterns of ecological, social and industrial phenomena that occur on site over different time frames. These patterns aid the understanding of the ecological purpose of the site and the alignment of the built intervention with this purpose. A building is imagined that will create solutions for public, industrial and ecological spaces, with different levels of engagement between the three. The concept of a solvent enforces the notion of hybridity and allows for new relationships between the public, industrial processes and natural cycles to develop. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

The continuing industrialisation of global society, specifically in developing countries, has resulted in the ongoing extraction of the earth's resources to feed the ever increasing demand for economic growth. What will happen when resources become scarce and unobtainable? What will happen when population growth becomes unmanageable? What will happen when the quality of life becomes displaced by the quantity thereof? The effects of such exploitation are already evident, and the longer solutions toward growing global populations and diminishing natural resources are postponed, the bleaker the future for modern human civilisation becomes. Many tipping points are being approached; some have already been passed. Now is the time to innovate and to find alternatives, as ways to redefine the relationships between people and resources. This dissertation is an investigation of a post-industrial artefact, an obsolete clay brick quarry and brickworks amidst the suburbs on the southern edge of Pretoria. It has undergone constant changes over the last century and quite noticeably during the last decade, as it lies latent in its obsolescence. The effects of time can be observed in the natural processes of decay, entropy and change, as well as in human development and growth. The history imprinted onto the site tells us about the dynamic patterns and relationships between man and his natural environment, seen in this now Post-Industrial Latent Artefact (P.I.L.A.), and hints toward a path for its future. The principles of Regenerative Design are employed to assist in finding and utilising potential within the P.I.L.A. A new life for the site is found by accessing its inherent potential, while the importance of Industrial Heritage is acknowledged. The programme, as latent potential, is generated through the uncovering of the site's patent potentials, in response to global resource concerns and urban resilience. The architectural design is generated through the conceptual basis of exchanges between knowledge, heritage, the social, the bio-physical, the programmatic, and the tectonic. A social spine is intersected and paralleled by areas of new production, in contrast with areas of historical production, which are all supported by an enhanced ecology and tied together into a new synthetic landscape. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

The introduction of the Bus Rapid Transit and the Gautrain Rail and Bus facilities to the corner of Wolmarans and Rissik Street in Johannesburg's inner city has altered the site on which the Brazilian Modernist inspired South African Railway War Memorial Hall is situated. The new public transport facilities have bought in new users, increasing the foot traffic on the site. However, the additional facilities on the site remain unchanged and does not accommodate and provide the necessary facilities for its current users. The South African Railway War Memorial Hall sits isolated from the site and the larger context of Johannesburg's inner city, and fails to communicate the energy and unique flavour, that is seen at many urban spaces within the culturally rich Johannesburg inner city. Interior architecture involves the alteration and adaptive reuse of existing structures. The thesis proposes the alteration of the South African Railway War Memorial Hall into a visitor centre for the Johannesburg Tourism Company. An intensive analysis was conducted in order to establish the historical, structural and environment contributors to the design. Visitor centres, relevant precedents, along with the theory of place-making were investigated to establish an effective design approach that will address the identified problem. This resulted in the design of the Urban Foyer. The intervention will provide the necessary facilities required by the current and proposed users. It will also promote and advertise local events, unique urban spaces frequented by locals and popular landmarks. It is hoped that such an intervention will facilitate the integration of the site with its immediate and larger context. It is also hoped that through this integration current and new users will be encouraged to explore Johannesburg's inner city. / Dissertation MInt(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MInt(Prof) / Unrestricted

The relation between industrial enclosures and their environments change in the post-industrial state, which causes a loss of orientation and identification of place. While the inherent character of such a place does not become thinned, it does however become encased in the remnants of industrial activity. The re-assessment, activation and interpretations of the transitions between industrial enclosures and their environments intend to bring the character of a place forward, and therefore emerges its seemingly vague placeness. The project proposal is situated on the periphery between the industrial and altered natural environment of Era Bricks, a dilapidated quarry which borders on industrial Silverton and Eersterust. The architectural intervention grapples with the transitions between the site’s dynamic environmental transformations and the static physicality of its structures. This exploration is manifested as an apiary and beekeeping facility, a formalised industry which cannot be fully contained. Translated into architecture, the dissertation suggests that beekeeping brings forward and reflects the ungraspable and imposing essence of the post-industrial terrain. Through the layered transitions of this programme, the terrain is aimed at becoming activated in its inherent sense of place. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted