This thesis is an evaluation and proposal for development for an alternative health care center in West Virginia. The Gesundheit Institute is based on the work of Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams and his desire to create an alternative to the current model of health care. The Institute would not charge for services and will offer non-traditional as well as traditional methods of healing. By evaluating what is currently happening at the center and what the resources are, I propose to use an incremental approach to growth. The ideas would result in a series of smaller buildings developed over time as opposed to a single larger building. The thesis includes the design for the next major building, a community center/dining hall and a basic design for a series of sleeping quarters. It also includes the reworking of the master plan to better include issues integrating incremental growth and sustainable development. / Master of Architecture

The South African population has been experiencing an unprecedented rate of urbanization that has left government bodies struggling to meet the qualitative and the infrastructural demands of the emergent sector in undeveloped areas. This dissertation aims to focus on the intensive networks found in these developing areas of vulnerability that display strong cohesion due to activities surrounding the production process. The premise presented is that in order to intervene architecturally with these networks, designers should critically engage these networks through participative processes of research, design and ideally construction. Through the author’s process of engagement, several key Architectural principles for an intervention emerge. Primarily the concept that a built intervention in a vulnerable settlement should first seek to associate itself with a network for its initial survival, and then aim to exist in a symbiotic relationship with this network through a mutually beneficial relationship. View <a href=" http://www.jhonobennett.com/">Jhono Bennett's blog</a>. Copyright 2011, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Bennett, J 2011, Platforms of engagement : a process of critical engagement with a developing context, MArch(Prof) dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11272011-161354 / > C12/4/36/gm / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Architecture / unrestricted