This dissertation investigates the relationship of the Fortifications in Pretoria to the public. The architectural problem of making the public aware of these Fortifications is investigated and responded to by designing a Visitors centre, to draw the public to the Fort, by creating an experience of moving through the landscape. This experience orientates the visitor visually towards various other iconic monuments, by symbolically turning the visitor into a camera, capturing views and experiences for himself. The program also provides facilities for Archaeological research which will be done on various other Fortification ruins and archaeological sites in Pretoria. The visitors experience and interaction with the landscape and the vision of the Fort as artefact contributes to the visitors being made aware of the gradual deterioration of the Fortifications in the city to ruins. The Fortifications themselves are monumental ruins, but by adding to them yet still respecting their heritage qualities, makes this a sensitive and respectful response to an important problem of how to preserve historical artefacts and at the same time utilising them. West Fort will become the catalyst for public awareness and experience to the other Fortifications within the city context. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Architecture / unrestricted

This project tries to understand how we alter existing architecture. The research leads to a proposal that attempts to answer the question: Should a death of a building be a part of its envisaged timeline? It is difficult to preempt a building being dead, but it might be possible to preempt a building being refurbished, renovated and especially replicated. I will try to incorporate the dimension of time in the new buildings and embrace the inevitable change, as well as explore the friction between originality and copying that the process of alteration generates. The site chosen for this architectural experiment is a ski jump erected at Norra Djurgården, and the proposal is its morphed copy hosting a visitors centre and an urban sports centre. The ambition is to establish guidelines or principles of mimicking and copying the elements of an existing edifice in the new one.

The project is a visitors’ centre for the Walloon milltowns in northern Uppland, Sweden.