Thesis (M.Arch. (Professional))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, 2016. / Drug abuse, particularly among younger generations, is an issue of increasing concern in South Africa. According to recent reports on global substance abuse, South Africa was named as having some of the highest rates of youth drug use in the world. This not only has dire impacts for local communities and their youth, but has led to increasing crime rates and unemployment in these communities. One such community, plagued with youth drug abuse and addiction, is Westbury, a former coloured township in Western Johannesburg. Westbury has, in turn, been selected as the focus area for this thesis due to prevailing struggles with youth drug addiction, high rates of drug-related crime and a community outcry for a solution. This thesis aims to investigate a means of alleviating degrees of drug use, and other risky youth behaviours, by introducing an architectural intervention. This intervention – defined as a Youth Centre and Safe House – will attempt to address the search for identity and meaning within the liminal state of adolescence, and the often risky behaviours that arise as a result, by providing a sense of ‘place’ and belonging for the ailing youth. With the main focus group being at-risk adolescents, and in order to create an architecture that speaks of the liminal state of adolescence, threshold and ‘the space between’ become important design concepts. This thesis attempts to investigate the movement between distinct spaces, the experience of transition, and the physical and psychological effects thereof. The resultant design proposes an architecture of liminality, where soft, implied thresholds and a celebration of ‘the space between’ become the manner in which the liminal subject can negotiate the built environment and establish a sense of ‘place’ within it. / EM2017