Thesis (M.Arch. (Prof.))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning, 2012. / Society is moving through the Information Age1, a period summarised by advancing
information technologies, a world economy, and a global culture, where an ephemeral
network has expanded to stir and captivate our everyday lives. While the seemingly
unimaginable nature and spatial qualities associated with this digital age continue to
captivate our imaginations, one cannot ignore that electronic space has grounding in
physical place; a consequence that sees minerals, energy, technology, and people
coming together in real spaces to construct the backbone upon which today’s global
information networks are built.
In this instantaneous era, where spatial tensions are characteristic of widespread
change, one need not stretch one’s imagination to see that people and cities are
increasingly pushed to find new ways to retain their grasp on and compete within the
circuits of globalising space. The shifting nature of urban geographies everywhere
materialise not only from the capacity of networks to disperse but also integrate
increasingly complex components of productivity throughout specific regions of the
world, while hollowing out spaces of marginality in others. Those cities located within
developing contexts, which live so precariously along a cusp, become frontiers for
unimagined resourcefulness and experimentation, where people as infrastructure
assemble with remarkable reach and efficiency to oscillate between the universal and
particular (Simone, 1998:173-187). These trajectories shift our perception from city to
borderland, where the urban imaginary converges on themes of exclusion and
incorporation, marginality and experimentation. Our incessant lifestyles and fixations
with technology, consumption, and obsolesce have reproduced volatile circumstances,
where mountains of discarded electronic waste are dumped near marginal communities.
These wastelands are far removed from the promises once held by this machinery –
instead offering opportunities only to those willing to salvage precious metals in
smouldering pits. By providing an interface that operates to alleviate the collision
between these phenomena; the Open Public Trade Forum, a hybrid market place where
a liberalised trade in metal weaves in and out between actual and virtual space, informal
and formal activities, local and global networks, could be the first to explore the
intersection between these traditionally exclusive sectors. Through rethinking existing
economic activities and socio-spatial environments the market is to become a lithe
public realm – an arena for altering perceptions – where established notions of trade
fuse with progressive concepts of exchange and production in an exploration of
1 Information Age: is a period characterised by widespread electronic access to information through the use of computer
technology (Encarta English Dictionary).
3 | P a g e
programmatic relations and typological inventions. This is a dynamic space to be used
as much for commerce and industry as social collectives, where a myriad of citizens are
brought together under the auspices of exchange: to trade in mixed metals, to visualise,
debate, and shift their dreams of urban futures, to experience chance encounters and
excite unique social interactions. And in so doing distinguish a new public architecture –
a pioneering metal market embedded between Johannesburg’s informal, informational
and industrial landscapes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/14473 |
| Date | 03 April 2014 |
| Creators | Du Plessis, Jacques |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds