OpenUCT :: Browsing by Subject "Urban Design"

Browsing by Subject "Urban Design"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 29

Open Access
Adaptive reuse : the Salt River market
(2010) Komane, Fatima Thapelo; Steenkamp, Alta; Noero, Jo; Carter, Francis
We live in a society that is constantly in change. As society moves forward, we experience social, political and economic shifts that somehow prove difficult for our buildings to survive in this rapid change. My Interest therefore looks to adaptive reuse as an approach to dealing with the change in our built environment. How do you deal, in an urban setting, with a neglected urban fabric without compromising Its historical and architectural memory which becomes important to a community? How do we begin to engage with the built fabric? It begins with accepting that transformation needs to occur. Adaptive reuse ensures the evolving life of any old building by expanding its practical use in its contemporary context. Existing and abandoned buildings represent a substantial resource. Through adaptive reuse, many buildings can continue to be brought back into use and contribute to a more sustainable development pattern. Old buildings in my opinion possess a timeless character. The aim of this document is to Investigate the potential of adaptive reuse as a response in transforming an existing structure on the brink of neglect into potentially a space that could be reused and function in a way that it supports the community and promote social engagement. The design and research develops a theoretically informed and sustainable approach to recycling built fabric in its contemporary urban context by linking patterns of adaptation and reuse to the change experienced in the contemporary built environment.
Open Access
Architecture as the background to collective life
(2009) Goldman, Anna Scott
This project develops an approach towards the arrangement and design of the primary elements - public facilities and spaces - that necessarily complement the provision of subsidised housing in South Africa. The historical response to the housing shortage in South Africa has been the provision of a remarkable number of individual housing units, but with insufficient funds and attention given to the urban infrastructure, public spaces and facilities that go hand in hand with housing in livable urban environments. This project considers a subsidy housing project where the social facilities are considered upfront, and are seen as an opportunity to create interesting, people-centred places in the development - this thesis is the search for an architecture which forms the backdrop, and framework for growth, for collective urban life. This paper is structured around six sections: thinking, siting, urban design, programming, making and designing. These sections explore, respectively, the theoretical proposal with regards to social facilities and public spaces, the strategic siting of an area of subsidised housing and its associated primary elements, an urban design proposal for the whole development, the programming of the whole site and the individual cluster of facilities that I consider in more detail, the spatial and technological realisation of the public fronts of three case study buildings, and finally the exploration and manifestation of these ideas through a design. My project is being done in conjunction with another student, Rob Richardson, who is looking at creative housing within the limit of the government subsidy. Together we make a proposal for an overall living environment which takes the form of an acupunctural insertion of subsidised housing and the associated primary elements into an area of Wynburg, Cape Town.
Open Access
Bridging the divide: Integrating the metro South East to the rest of the city through design
(2019) Walker, Charne; Ewing, Kathryn
Cape Towns current spatial construct still reflects the apartheid and modernist city planning regime. The result of this can be seen in the fragmented urban and social fabric of the city today. The apartheid planning regime had created a city of boundaries which was divisive and psychotic (Mbembe, 2008). The main objective of both apartheid and modernist spatial planning ordeals were to divide the city and restrict access and the freedom of movement based on race. It was a racial city (Mbembe, 2008). The act of place-making translated into race-making (Tayob, 2019) The marginalised population had been restricted access in all forms, physical, spatial and social. Access to economic opportunity, civic and recreational facilities, educational facilities land, and sufficient infrastructure had been restricted, and at times, dimished. Through the use of harsh infrastructure, such as railway lines and higher order roads (highways and freeways) certain portions of the population and the city were segregated and enclosed. This was a dominant determinant of of the present fragmented urban and social form. Decades after the abolishment of apartheid, very few advances have been made to systematically challenge the way the city's constructed and knit the city back together (Grutman & Patel, 2016). Cape Town still faces a huge disparity when it comes to social and economic inclusion. The marginalised urban poor still live on the periphery of the city having to travel great distances to access opportunity. Majority of economic opportunity sits within the CBD and large portion of Cape Town's population reside within the Meto South East. A large amount of movement happens towards to the CBD from the South East on a daily basis, resulting in traffic congestion and a large strain on the already limited public transport system. The formation of the current city alludes to very unequal, unjust and inaccessible city. This research project investgates the notion of 'Bridging the divide'. It explores ways in which we can spatially integrate the South East Metro to the rest of the city through spatial frameworks and design interventions at the sub-metro and precinct scale. One that allows integration across harsh infrastructural barriers in order to create a more socially and economically inclusive urban environment This allows for the creation of a spatial design model that can be implemented across the city, alluding to a polycentric model concept. This research explores theories from Susans Fainsteins 'Just City' (2011), David Harveys 'The Right to the City' (2004), David Crane's 'Capital Web' (1960) and Nabeel Hamdi's 'Small Change' (2004). Through the application of these theories, this reseach project adapts spatial Executive Summary Bridging the Divide concepts from each and applies them into its concept and design strategies. These theories promote the idea and vision of a just and equitable city which my narrative and aims alludes to. The aim of this research project is to create viable linkages across harsh infrastructural divides and connect the present urban fragmentation through a spatial design framework. In order to integrate the marginalised Metro South East, I look upon Hamdi (2004) and his theory on incrementality. Providing an interconnected framework that allows for infill from the every day life. Through these small changes and an adequate framework it can allow for access to the rest of the city through the idea of horizontality, networking and linkages. Through the creation of permeable networks and linkages, the city thus becomes inclusive and just, tapping on the theory from Fainstein (2011) and Harvey (2004) which will be further explored within this research project, and more specifically, this document. These linkages, spatial frameworks and design guidelines will connect adjacent suburbs across harsh infrastructural divides that will allow for the freedom of movement and equitable access. These principles and strategies will draw people into the MSE, towards these unique nodes. These linkages will consist of educational linkages, ecological linkages, recreational and civic linkages and movement / access linkages. The spatial model which consists of these linkages will create self sufficent nodes which work around the train stations throughout the city. These stations allow for that critical point of integration across the rail. This allows for the distribution of functions from the CBD to the rest of the city. Less of a skewed, monocentric economic hub, to a more polycentric city form. These nodes will be unique and self-functioning and will host various economic, educational, recreational, residtential and economic opportunity. To implement this spatial design strategy and model this design research works around the implementation of the Blue Downs Rail by using the new Rail and proposed train stations as a point of intergration and intervention. to “Bridge the divide” in a literal and theoretical sense. The study area is focused in Blue Downs, an area lacking integration and nodal activity. This design research devises a spatial development framework that will guide and inform the urban design rationale the precinct scale. This design research project then translates and tests the design strategies at the precinct scale further testing the notion of “Bridging the Divide” through the physical creation of social. educational, ecological and urban linkages
Open Access
Cape (of no) Flats : a new landscape of experience
(2010) Hitchcock, Stephen
Open Access
Creating water sensitive places in Hangberg
(2021) Smith Mari; Ewing, Kathryn
The neighbourhood of Hangberg has had a long and intimate relationship with water, the neighbourhood is located around the Hout Bay harbour where the fishing industry provides the main source of employment and residents depend on clean water for their daily needs. This relationship has however been put under strain as urban development has affected the natural and urban water cycle resulting in flooding, soil erosion, pollution and water shortages. Urban spaces and residents have become detached from water as infrastructure tends to be hidden underground and water is seen as a nuisance rather than an asset. Even though we depend on water resources, it is often not a priority in the design and development of our urban spaces. We need to relook at the relationship between water and urban space to provide a solution that integrates the urban water cycle with good qualities of urban design to create a liveable neighbourhood
Open Access
Disruptive adaptations: An urban design approach to youth socio-economic resilience, a case of Havana in Katutura, Windhoek - Namibia
(2024) Nangula, Soini En; Ewing, Kathryn
The youth in marginalized communities, such as Havana in Katutura, grapple with substantial unemployment due to limited formal opportunities. To sustain their livelihoods, they resort to the informal economy, working as street vendors or establishing small survivalist enterprises for income. Through a qualitative research methodology, this study delves into the stories of informal youth vendors to understand the innovative strategies they employ daily as they navigate the challenges they face, how they appropriate public spaces to meet their needs, and how they create socioeconomic opportunities for themselves, even though these may not be sufficient. The analysis and exploration of the study bring to light aspects related to the negotiation of space in highly contested spaces, as well as the power dynamics inherent in urban design, planning policies, and urban developments. Havana, as an urban informal settlement, is experiencing rapid growth accompanied by the complexities that come with urban expansion, including a lack of basic services, inadequate sanitation, improper waste management methods, and insufficient infrastructure and public spaces, particularly youth centered. This study seeks to address the question of whether urban design can serve as an effective approach to creating improved socio-economic opportunities for the majority of residents in Havana Informal Settlement. The approach adopted is incremental, and through the design process of this study, an adaptive urban design framework has been developed—one that is flexible and adaptable to address the identified challenges. In conclusion, the study presents a set of spatial guidelines that can be implemented in similar contexts.
Open Access
Everyday citizenship: people, place and politics in Philippi
(2023) Maurtin, Leigh; Ewing, Kathryn; Croojmans, Hedwig
In the South African context, political and universal rights of citizens have been expanded since liberation but the basic services and livelihoods have eroded (Miraftab, 2009). Marginalized citizens have created their homes through auto construction, and self-making, in the post-apartheid city (Caldeira, 2017). This is evident in spaces like Philippi, where areas of Neoliberal planning practices remain as exclusionary imaginaries of city and citizenship that promote collective amnesia (Miraftab, 2009). Insurgent planning scholarship calls for collective memory and looks to liberating planning imaginaries and histories of marginalized people as strength in knowledge (Miraftab, 2009). Through ways of being and social spatial production practices, people are infrastructure (Simone, 2004). The social practices and community agencies inform a type of infrastructure. Amin (2014) speaks of the liveliness of infrastructure. The term infrastructure is used loosely. It indicates the bigger infrastructural elements like transport infrastructure, yet to come in Philippi, as well as other more basic infrastructure like water, sanitation, and electricity, which are often void in spaces in Philippi. Amin (2014) highlights the politics of community and institution, and visible and invisible infrastructure (Amin, 2014). Networks of social gathering spaces, such as economic trade and eating areas, and physical space, like places of water collection and sanitation, give a rendering of the urban poor experience. As part of the experience of these infrastructures, the sensory landscape of urban places holds collective memory and social outlook (Amin, 2014). Acknowledging and paying homage to this helps an understanding of the noteworthy social, cultural and spatial rituals of place and self-built placemaking in Philippi. Through investigating planned and self-built places and their everyday practices, this study has attempted to collect spatial practices, to inform a framework that considers this narrative and the interventions it suggests. The collection of information has been used to guide and inform design principles for interventions at various scales. The starting point of the inquiry is the pavement. A universal everyday place that all actors engage with. In Philippi, the pavement and walkways offer many everyday practices. The pavement is the most common public space of movement, social exchange, and public and private interface, and the investigation of the street in Philippi has informed other areas of design intervention.
Open Access
Exploring folded space in urban Cape Town : unfolding the Strand / Adderley Street juncion
(2009) Willemse, Mariet
This thesis started with a personal interest as to what informs architectural form, specifically the folded, smooth or continuous form so visible in contemporary architecture. I was interested in the relationship between the formal 'folds' of contemporary architecture and the spatial theory of 'folded space'. In order to understand where these forms are coming from and whether or not the idea of 'folded space' could bring value to the construct of architecture in the South African context I had to gather a comprehensive understanding of the state of architecture in the 21" century and of course that meant researching the failures and successes of what went before. I have learned that the obsession with folded form comes from contemporary architecture's preoccupation with connection and complexity in architecture. In short; Modernism sought to group, zone and separate different spatial programs which were often translated into pure geometric forms, Post-Modernism reacted against the monotony of Modernism by juxtaposing exaggerated oppositions in form and spaces. Today, in the transitional phase from the late 20th century to the beginnings of the 21" century, contemporary architecture still struggles with the theme of connection and complexity in architecture. The idea of 'folded space' where previously unrelated elements are smoothly integrated within a continuous, but heterogeneous mixture seems to provide contemporary architects with an alternative to the purity of Modernism and the vulgar oppositions of Post-modernism. So the question contemporary architecture is faced with today is: How can architecture formulate a continuous mixture which still allows for variety complexity? The theory investigation concluded that the relevance of the folded space in the South African context could be the realization that through the folding or blurring of the relationship between previously unrelated programs, spaces and the building and its urban context, new and interesting social interactions might arise. The corner of Strand and Adderley Street on the station site proved an appropriate site on which to test this theory of 'folded space' on both a social and a spatial level. Although the site is situated on the most important intersection in the city it is known for its clear separations and barriers. The three levels in the center of the city, the underground, the ground and the above ground I station roof are separated both spatially and socially. The design project strives to experiment with ways in which to 'fold' the distinct spaces that are imminent, but repressed on this corner site in the heart of Cape Town's city. Through folding or connecting these spaces and programs that were previously separated the architecture will aim to act as a platform for social encounters amongst its users.
Open Access
Forgotten Places: Points of confluence in existing urban frameworks
(2019) Lenton, Scott; Ewing, Kathryn
The notion of Forgotten Place within the urban realm is very intriguing as a narrative from which the revitalization of dilapidated and under-utilized space can be given a new importance. This dissertation addresses the design challenge of revitalizing and reshaping spaces within an existing urban context using specific theoretical principles to help make the legibility of the proposal clear. Currently in our cities, designers face the challenge of generating outdoor environments as communal, inclusive spatial frameworks that propagate new development. Pedestrian connections between important destinations are often disjointed and disturbed, where walking can be a disorienting experience. Identifying these gaps in spatial continuity, then using a set of design principles, these Forgotten Places can be filled with a framework of buildings and interconnected open-space opportunities that will generate new interest and use. These misused spaces have underlying themes which link to the authentic identity of local communities. It is suggested that this meaning is culturally immensely significant, and that remembering these definitions allows for a more integrative and inclusive set of city-making components. Forgotten Places in the existing urban fabric of Port Elizabeth provide an exceptional opportunity to reshape a deteriorating and underused place, so that it attracts people back into powerful places of cultural significance and helps restore communities
Open Access
Forgotten Places: Points of confluence in existing urban frameworks
(2019) Lenton, Scott; Ewing, Kathryn
The notion of Forgotten Place within the urban realm is very intriguing as a narrative from which the revitalization of dilapidated and under-utilized space can be given a new importance. This dissertation addresses the design challenge of revitalizing and reshaping spaces within an existing urban context using specific theoretical principles to help make the legibility of the proposal clear. Currently in our cities, designers face the challenge of generating outdoor environments as communal, inclusive spatial frameworks that propagate new development. Pedestrian connections between important destinations are often disjointed and disturbed, where walking can be a disorienting experience. Identifying these gaps in spatial continuity, then using a set of design principles, these Forgotten Places can be filled with a framework of buildings and interconnected open-space opportunities that will generate new interest and use. These misused spaces have underlying themes which link to the authentic identity of local communities. It is suggested that this meaning is culturally immensely significant, and that remembering these definitions allows for a more integrative and inclusive set of city-making components. Forgotten Places in the existing urban fabric of Port Elizabeth provide an exceptional opportunity to reshape a deteriorating and underused place, so that it attracts people back into powerful places of cultural significance and helps restore communities
Open Access
INFLOW: Spatially Integrating Local Water Capture into Gugulethu and Surrounds, Cape Town
(2018) Mclachlan, Julia; Ewing, Kathryn
function. A severe drought in recent years has placed pressure on the water supply infrastructure, with dams at times, precariously low. To address this, stormwater harvesting is being considered as part of diversification strategies aimed at augmenting the current water resources. This local water capture strategy however, needs to be spatially integrated into settlement, as argued by Dewar (2017). Stormwater infrastructure systems have however, generally been considered as purely utilitarian public works services, designed to drain water as rapidly as possible from impermeable surfaces of built up areas. They are not spatially integrated into urban settlements and ultimately create barriers that divide space and segregate communities. Buildings have in response, turned their backs on these channels and they have become dumping grounds, unsafe and neglected. It is therefore necessary to design sustainable stormwater infrastructure systems that not only capture and store water, but also serve as multi-functional public open space systems that are integrated with the fabric of the urban settlement. The research explores the notion that lines of movement are flows of energy. A continuous uninterrupted line however, acts as a barrier as it limits crossings, interaction or access. Conventional stormwater and vehicular networks are continuous lines of flow, focussed on uninterrupted movement, whether of vehicles (in mobility routes) or surface water run-off (in canals). They act as barriers, limiting crossings and impeding spatial integration. They create along their edges, what Jane Jacobs refers to as 'border vacuums' (Mehaffy, et al, 2015:206). To remove these barriers of flow, the research design proposal applies the 'accessibility surface' (Dewar and Louw, 2016:25) to movement and surface water systems (including stormwater) as a means of removing barriers and generating access, opportunity and spatial integration. In this water sensitive urban design approach, stormwater infrastructure functions as a hybrid system, serving 'cultural, social and ecological functions' (Morrish and Brown, 2008:141) within settlements, providing varied opportunities as part of a multi-purpose public open space. The term 'Inflow', is applied to define and encapsulate the approach: the movement of both water and people into space in the pursuit of place-making opportunities. To test the hypothesis, the design research applies the 'accessibility surface' of movement and surface water systems to the Zeekoe Catchment of Cape Town. The study area is focused on the Big Lotus 'River', a canal constructed to drain water from Cape Town International Airport as well as the areas of Gugulethu, Nyanga and surrounds. It devises a spatial development framework that guides and informs the three-dimensional spatial aspects of an urban design framework. It further tests this notion of 'inflow' at a precinct scale exploring various details. The design research concludes that an 'Inflow' approach that stitches the surface water systems (including stormwater) into the settlement as part of an 'accessibility surface' provides a suitable basis for structurally and spatially integrating local water capture into settlement. Furthermore it addresses the problem of barriers of flow that spatially segregate and reduce accessibility by providing greater permeability and accessibility according to a hierarchical system. 'Inflow' therefore creates the opportunities for stopping or pause moments that allow for permeability and improved access to opportunity
Open Access
Interface: The search for legibility of urban form for African migrants in Cape Town, South Africa
(2019) Mutia, Kevin Ngumbao; Ewing, Kathryn
In moving, fleeing or travelling to a different country for a myriad of reasons, migrants find themselves in new contexts, new worlds sometimes completely different from the places they come from. This makes them a vulnerable proportion of society in the urban spaces they find themselves in. Further this added complexity in understanding a new context comes as a concern in terms of navigating new urban spaces, seeking shelter, and creating livelihoods in these 'new worlds'. A plethora of borders and barriers to integration and adaptation exist in the host urban setting. From language barriers, to financial and cultural exclusion, host community xenophobic attitudes, further to being a foreigner in a foreign land with different urban structures and ways of life. In the quest to seek shelter and find settlement and creating livelihoods, migrants find themselves navigating new urban structures and forms which are unlike where they come from. From creating Lynch's mind maps to assist in mental mapping of one's physical spaces, migrants identify paths, nodes, edges, districts and landmarks from their own perspectives that create a layer of urban space that in most cases lacks to be incorporated in urban planning and design consideration for our cities that are 'worlding' (Ong, 2011; 10) by becoming more diverse by the day. The two outermost tips on the continent of Africa present two different cites with similar themes of exclusion of migrants in accessing the proverbial 'better life'. From Mellila's exclusionary borders, high-fence, razed wire barriers to Cape Town's exclusionary urban structure, migrant narratives from the north to the south of Africa are riddled with stories of exclusion, fear and being 'othered'. In seeking to address notions of acceptance, integration and adaptation. The project aims to provide a leeway in addressing the plights of the African migrant in urban space in cities on the continent by focusing on a case example in Cape Town to assess how strategic interface locations in the city can allow for 'worlding' by celebrating diversity and enabling rights to the city for all including the 'other'. Hence this research project seeks to gain an understanding into the lived experience of African migrants in the production of urban space through everyday migrant urbanism in Cape Town.
Open Access
A living tower: Using architecture for sustainable future growth
(2009) Scott, Jacobus Olivier
This thesis demonstrates how architectural design can be used to help alleviate the current environmental crisis, using a radical sustainable approach that integrates high density living and farming activities within the context of suburban planning. In South Africa, population growth and urbanisation have led to low-rise low-density buildings invading . bio diversity nodes, valuable arable land, and natural reserves on the periphery of cities. Not only are the infrastructural costs of servicing these low-density suburbs very high, but the pollution caused by daily commuting to and from the workplace has lasting environmental consequences. Continuing deforestation is needed to create new arable land; at the same time, ploughing and shipping within the agricultural sector make a significant contribution to global pollution, while up to 70% of potable water is lost through evaporation during irrigation. The architectural approach on which this thesis is based, integrates the usually separate components of living and farming, into a single closed high-rise entity, called the Living Tower. Taking a cue from ecosystem dynamics, a Living Tower model was developed to mimics the natural process whereby the waste of one entity becomes the food of another, creating an efficient cyclical flow of resources. In this way, renewable resources comprise the heart of the life-giving and life-sustaining Tower. Analysis of earlier designs based on similar principles is used to identify key elements of the Living Tower. These include amongst other integrated stacked greenhouses, evaporative coolers, an anaerobic digester, a central atrium design and a living machine (eco restorer). Living Tower models of differing heights are compared and evaluated in terms of their sustainability and efficiency. A thirty storey Living Tower is shown to provide the optimal solution to the core environmental issues considered, including the renewal of natural resources and the reclaiming of arable land. The corresponding diagrams, calculations and graphs illustrate the potential impact on both nature and society of a thirty storey Living Tower. This innovative design solution focuses on shaping the landscape with contextual reference in order for the Tower to 'grow' out of the hills and include a variety of mixed used programs in the form of living, working and playing to enhance social interaction. Through the design solutions the Living Tower successfully combines higher living densities and an ecologically friendly lifestyle in a structure that is economically viable, aesthetically pleasing, and therefore using architecture for sustainable future growth.
Open Access
Magnifying the interstice: Mixed-use reuse of abandoned lanes in Salt River
(2010) Vaughan, Sasha; Steenkamp, Alta; Noero, Jo; Carter, Francis; Coetzer, Nic
Open Access
Manenberg Negotiated: answering questions communities are not asking
(2019) Hedley, Phillipa A; Ewing, Kathryn
Within the global South, the public realm is often characterised as a territory of intense accessibility and spatial claims, equally enabling and constricting citizens to shape and reshape an inclusive place within the informal city. The contemporary African city has been central to the discourse around the rapidity of urban development and influx, producing a global narrative of the inability of a frail postcolonial metropolis to support this growth. What is emerging, however, is the resulting improvisation of the city’s inhabitants to reimagine their contrasting, everyday environments for the city’s negotiation and daily navigation. Often, the global discourse omits the finer, more nuanced informality of life that the African city’s marginalised users employ in the everyday to innovatively sustain their livelihood. Central to this imagination, is the Designer’s role to spatially represent all citizens within the urban arena; achieving this through the People’s City design approach. This participatory, incremental approach produces innovation outside the preconceived idea of a design product; rather, pursuing the process over the product. If more than half the city is marginal, the role facing practice should be framing solutions from the perspective and design of citizen/community majority. As Hamdi observes, the integrity of developing an inclusive approach in design, is through the collective voice and experience from within the community context itself; “practice, then, is about making the ordinary special and the special more widely accessible - expanding the boundaries of understanding and possibility with vision and common sense... It is about getting it right for now and at the same time being tactical and strategic about later” (Hamdi, 2004). Manenberg, Cape Town, provides insight into the negotiation of community spaces; where form-making operates outside of the regular and explores how previous areas of exclusion contribute to an emergence of a more flexible and adaptable city. Rather than the static public realm, Manenberg demonstrates “a temporal articulation and occupation of space which not only creates a richer sensibility of spatial occupation, but also suggests how spatial limits are expanded to include formally unimagined uses in dense urban conditions” (Mehrotra, 2010). These unimagined, informal spatial nuances become the co-construction of choice and improvisation that composes daily life. This collaboration and co-constructing of place formed the catalyst from which the research project pursues the process over the product, and was the key in developing an action research methodology to partnering and co-design with community members. The overarching thread that this research project attempts to explore in its approach, is: how can designers intervene in a manner which creatively alters the persistent dominance of exclusion in the public realm? And, in doing so, can the community be invited into the process? Throughout this iterative design, three principles emerged: People, power and place; through these the design process could be interrogated across multiple scales, with participants establishing outcomes, diagnosing spatial negotiations and dreaming proposed interventions. The co-design process in the research project required active engagement, where the participants explored values, issues, threats and opportunities relating to the principles through a series of three process stages: Diagnosis, Dreaming and Designing. The intention was to allow the question of what the community wanted to emerge from within the groups. This process framework provides an opportunity for the group members to revisit their visioning iteratively during each process stage, testing and negotiating decisions of how interventions can be achieved. It allows the participants a space to comprehend urban solutions and explore alternatives, responding to on-the-ground issues from local and nuanced experience. Answering questions communities are not asking: this subtitle becomes a commentary, or perhaps a statement, on how previous areas of exclusion, the marginalised and the informal city, often do not have a voice in the conversation of how their spaces are conceived and designed for them, without them. The research project concludes with strategies of intervention, with outcomes and solutions generated from the process of co-design. These strategies were then transposed into incremental interventions, testing the greatest impact to alter the accessibility of the public realm. The greatest tool to emerge from the community-led approach was the identification of potential partnerships which strengthened the dynamics in negotiating the public realm; illustrating that if communities are offered a seat at the table, the designs become all the richer, participating in the emergence of a more flexible, incremental and adaptable city.
Open Access
Manenberg negotiated: answering questions communities are not asking
(2019) Hedley, Phillippa A; Ewing, Kathryn
Within the global South, the public realm is often characterised as a territory of intense accessibility and spatial claims, equally enabling and constricting citizens to shape and reshape an inclusive place within the informal city. The contemporary African city has been central to the discourse around the rapidity of urban development and influx, producing a global narrative of the inability of a frail postcolonial metropolis to support this growth. What is emerging, however, is the resulting improvisation of the city's inhabitants to reimagine their contrasting, everyday environments for the city's negotiation and daily navigation. Often, the global discourse omits the finer, more nuanced informality of life that the African city's marginalised users employ in the everyday to innovatively sustain their livelihood. Central to this imagination, is the Designer's role to spatially represent all citizens within the urban arena; achieving this through the People's City design approach. This participatory, incremental approach produces innovation outside the preconceived idea of a design product; rather, pursuing the process over the product. If more than half the city is marginal, the role facing practice should be framing solutions from the perspective and design of citizen/community majority. As Hamdi observes, the integrity of developing an inclusive approach in design, is through the collective voice and experience from within the community context itself; “practice, then, is about making the ordinary special and the special more widely accessible - expanding the boundaries of understanding and possibility with vision and common sense... It is about getting it right for now and at the same time being tactical and strategic about later” (Hamdi, 2004). Manenberg, Cape Town, provides insight into the negotiation of community spaces; where form-making operates outside of the regular and explores how previous areas of exclusion contribute to an emergence of a more flexible and adaptable city. Rather than the static public realm, Manenberg demonstrates “a temporal articulation and occupation of space which not only creates a richer sensibility of spatial occupation, but also suggests how spatial limits are expanded to include formally unimagined uses in dense urban conditions” (Mehrotra, 2010). These unimagined, informal spatial nuances become the co-construction of choice and improvisation that composes daily life. This collaboration and co-constructing of place formed the catalyst from which the research project pursues the process over the product, and was the key in developing an action research methodology to partnering and co-design with community members. The overarching thread that this research project attempts to explore in its approach, is: how can designers intervene in a manner which creatively alters the persistent dominance of exclusion in the public realm? And, in doing so, can the community be invited into the process? Throughout this iterative design, three principles emerged: People, power and place; through these the design process could be interrogated across multiple scales, with participants establishing outcomes, diagnosing spatial negotiations and dreaming proposed interventions. The co-design process in the research project required active engagement, where the participants explored values, issues, threats and opportunities relating to the principles through a series of three process stages: Diagnosis, Dreaming and Designing. The intention was to allow the question of what the community wanted to emerge from within the groups. This process framework provides an opportunity for the group members to revisit their visioning iteratively during each process stage, testing and negotiating decisions of how interventions can be achieved. It allows the participants a space to comprehend urban solutions and explore alternatives, responding to on-the-ground issues from local and nuanced experience. Answering questions communities are not asking: this subtitle becomes a commentary, or perhaps a statement, on how previous areas of exclusion, the marginalised and the informal city, often do not have a voice in the conversation of how their spaces are conceived and designed for them, without them. The research project concludes with strategies of intervention, with outcomes and solutions generated from the process of co-design. These strategies were then transposed into incremental interventions, testing the greatest impact to alter the accessibility of the public realm. The greatest tool to emerge from the community-led approach was the identification of potential partnerships which strengthened the dynamics in negotiating the public realm; illustrating that if communities are offered a seat at the table, the designs become all the richer, participating in the emergence of a more flexible, incremental and adaptable city.
Open Access
Manenberg negotiated: answering questions communities are not asking
(2019) Hedley, Phillippa; Ewing, Kathryn
Within the global South, the public realm is often characterised as a territory of intense accessibility and spatial claims, equally enabling and constricting citizens to shape and reshape an inclusive place within the informal city. The contemporary African city has been central to the discourse around the rapidity of urban development and influx, producing a global narrative of the inability of a frail postcolonial metropolis to support this growth. What is emerging, however, is the resulting improvisation of the city's inhabitants to reimagine their contrasting, everyday environments for the city's negotiation and daily navigation. Often, the global discourse omits the finer, more nuanced informality of life that the African city's marginalised users employ in the everyday to innovatively sustain their livelihood. Central to this imagination, is the Designer's role to spatially represent all citizens within the urban arena; achieving this through the People's City design approach. This participatory, incremental approach produces innovation outside the preconceived idea of a design product; rather, pursuing the process over the product. If more than half the city is marginal, the role facing practice should be framing solutions from the perspective and design of citizen/community majority. As Hamdi observes, the integrity of developing an inclusive approach in design, is through the collective voice and experience from within the community context itself; “practice, then, is about making the ordinary special and the special more widely accessible - expanding the boundaries of understanding and possibility with vision and common sense... It is about getting it right for now and at the same time being tactical and strategic about later” (Hamdi, 2004). Manenberg, Cape Town, provides insight into the negotiation of community spaces; where form-making operates outside of the regular and explores how previous areas of exclusion contribute to an emergence of a more flexible and adaptable city. Rather than the static public realm, Manenberg demonstrates “a temporal articulation and occupation of space which not only creates a richer sensibility of spatial occupation, but also suggests how spatial limits are expanded to include formally unimagined uses in dense urban conditions” (Mehrotra, 2010). These unimagined, informal spatial nuances become the co-construction of choice and improvisation that composes daily life. This collaboration and co-constructing of place formed the catalyst from which the research project pursues the process over the product, and was the key in developing an action research methodology to partnering and co-design with community members. The overarching thread that this research project attempts to explore in its approach, is: how can designers intervene in a manner which creatively alters the persistent dominance of exclusion in the public realm? And, in doing so, can the community be invited into the process? Throughout this iterative design, three principles emerged: People, power and place; through these the design process could be interrogated across multiple scales, with participants establishing outcomes, diagnosing spatial negotiations and dreaming proposed interventions. The co-design process in the research project required active engagement, where the participants explored values, issues, threats and opportunities relating to the principles through a series of three process stages: Diagnosis, Dreaming and Designing. The intention was to allow the question of what the community wanted to emerge from within the groups. This process framework provides an opportunity for the group members to revisit their visioning iteratively during each process stage, testing and negotiating decisions of how interventions can be achieved. It allows the participants a space to comprehend urban solutions and explore alternatives, responding to on-the-ground issues from local and nuanced experience. Answering questions communities are not asking: this subtitle becomes a commentary, or perhaps a statement, on how previous areas of exclusion, the marginalised and the informal city, often do not have a voice in the conversation of how their spaces are conceived and designed for them, without them. The research project concludes with strategies of intervention, with outcomes and solutions generated from the process of co-design. These strategies were then transposed into incremental interventions, testing the greatest impact to alter the accessibility of the public realm. The greatest tool to emerge from the community-led approach was the identification of potential partnerships which strengthened the dynamics in negotiating the public realm; illustrating that if communities are offered a seat at the table, the designs become all the richer, participating in the emergence of a more flexible, incremental and adaptable city.
Open Access
Manenberg negotiated: answering questions communities are not asking
(2019) Hedley, Phillippa; Ewing, Kathryn
Within the global South, the public realm is often characterised as a territory of intense accessibility and spatial claims, equally enabling and constricting citizens to shape and reshape an inclusive place within the informal city. The contemporary African city has been central to the discourse around the rapidity of urban development and influx, producing a global narrative of the inability of a frail postcolonial metropolis to support this growth. What is emerging, however, is the resulting improvisation of the city's inhabitants to reimagine their contrasting, everyday environments for the city's negotiation and daily navigation. Often, the global discourse omits the finer, more nuanced informality of life that the African city's marginalised users employ in the everyday to innovatively sustain their livelihood. Central to this imagination, is the Designer's role to spatially represent all citizens within the urban arena; achieving this through the People's City design approach. This participatory, incremental approach produces innovation outside the preconceived idea of a design product; rather, pursuing the process over the product. If more than half the city is marginal, the role facing practice should be framing solutions from the perspective and design of citizen/community majority. As Hamdi observes, the integrity of developing an inclusive approach in design, is through the collective voice and experience from within the community context itself; “practice, then, is about making the ordinary special and the special more widely accessible - expanding the boundaries of understanding and possibility with vision and common sense... It is about getting it right for now and at the same time being tactical and strategic about later” (Hamdi, 2004). Manenberg, Cape Town, provides insight into the negotiation of community spaces; where form-making operates outside of the regular and explores how previous areas of exclusion contribute to an emergence of a more flexible and adaptable city. Rather than the static public realm, Manenberg demonstrates “a temporal articulation and occupation of space which not only creates a richer sensibility of spatial occupation, but also suggests how spatial limits are expanded to include formally unimagined uses in dense urban conditions” (Mehrotra, 2010). These unimagined, informal spatial nuances become the co-construction of choice and improvisation that composes daily life. This collaboration and co-constructing of place formed the catalyst from which the research project pursues the process over the product, and was the key in developing an action research methodology to partnering and co-design with community members. The overarching thread that this research project attempts to explore in its approach, is: how can designers intervene in a manner which creatively alters the persistent dominance of exclusion in the public realm? And, in doing so, can the community be invited into the process? Throughout this iterative design, three principles emerged: People, power and place; through these the design process could be interrogated across multiple scales, with participants establishing outcomes, diagnosing spatial negotiations and dreaming proposed interventions. The co-design process in the research project required active engagement, where the participants explored values, issues, threats and opportunities relating to the principles through a series of three process stages: Diagnosis, Dreaming and Designing. The intention was to allow the question of what the community wanted to emerge from within the groups. This process framework provides an opportunity for the group members to revisit their visioning iteratively during each process stage, testing and negotiating decisions of how interventions can be achieved. It allows the participants a space to comprehend urban solutions and explore alternatives, responding to on-the-ground issues from local and nuanced experience. Answering questions communities are not asking: this subtitle becomes a commentary, or perhaps a statement, on how previous areas of exclusion, the marginalised and the informal city, often do not have a voice in the conversation of how their spaces are conceived and designed for them, without them. The research project concludes with strategies of intervention, with outcomes and solutions generated from the process of co-design. These strategies were then transposed into incremental interventions, testing the greatest impact to alter the accessibility of the public realm. The greatest tool to emerge from the community-led approach was the identification of potential partnerships which strengthened the dynamics in negotiating the public realm; illustrating that if communities are offered a seat at the table, the designs become all the richer, participating in the emergence of a more flexible, incremental and adaptable city.
Open Access
The meeting of cultures
(2009) De Moyencourt, Lucie Bernadette Joan; Steenkamp, Alta; Noero, Jo; Carter, Francis
The concept for this paper and for my thesis comes from a personal desire to facilitate cross-cultural interaction in a space. I began by questioning whether architecture can bring together people from different backgrounds and cultures, and if so then what type of architecture does this? And how does it do this? I believe the city is a psychological as well as physical reality. The city exists as a series of doubles; having official and hidden cultures, it is both a real place and a site of the imagination. Its elaborate network of streets, housing, public buildings, transport systems, parks, and shops is paralleled by complex attitudes, habits, customs, expectancies, hopes and popular culture that reside in us as urban subjects. (Cbamber5 I. ( 1986) Popular culture, the metropolitan experience, USA; Methuen & Co. P. 183) I believe that public architecture should represent and reflect popular culture in order to arouse and attract people together in a space. By doing so, the art and magic of architecture becomes accessible to the general populace. Architecture is a public art whereby the creator of the work should think of designing for pleasing the people on the street as much as pleasing the client of the project. A building that is able to communicate with people adds depth to people's lives and daily experience. I am interested in architecture which makes you fantasize, dream, marvel, act, jump in fountains, climb up walls of buildings, lose your inhibitions, and break taboos in society. A work of architecture thus becomes a stimulus for discussion, exchange and pleasure. This study is my opportunity for developing a number of ideas about popular architecture as well as to express my own love of vibrant popular places in order to enable creative design for my architectural thesis. Through this theoretical investigation I hope to discover innovative ways of realizing my concepts of building for 'the people'; of giving the people what they would like to see in a public building. I believe that fascinating structures can be made for the built environment by applying knowledge from popular culture.
Open Access
The memory laboratory : reclaiming and remebering the archeological fragments of Cape Town's original shoreline
(2010) Siebert, Erin
This thesis project began with an interest in public space and particularly the role of collective urban memory in reading and understanding public space in the city, as well as being a means of imbuing public space with meaning. This is closely linked to ideas of shared experience, identity and legacy. These ideas are widely discussed and debated in the making of architecture in our post colonial, post apartheid context. My interest is in the development of inclusive collective memories and how these histories become part of the everyday life of the city. Architecture and urban design play a key role in the spatial and physical expression of collective urban memory. This paper represents the body of work undertaken during this year long thesis investigation and provides the introduction to the architectural design project borne out of this research. The first part provides a theoretical basis for the project. Firstly it investigates the spatialization of memory in the human brain and relates this to the ways that collective memory has spatial implications in the urban environment. It also explores the development of a theory for collective memory. Secondly this section investigates the role of architecture in collective memory and reviews the typoolgies of memory architecture through examples of these typologies at work in Cape Town. It also reveals the development of memory architecture, in particular the 'museum ' through the ages. The second part of the paper is an exploration into the technology or making of buildings, and particularly looks at the role of time in the 'making' of architecture. This section is representative of my interest in the life story of buildings and investigates the way they change, adapt and are recycled or re-used over time. It considers the potential of flexibility (flex buildings) in creating sustainable architecture. This section also compiles the strategies, methodologies and lessons into a manifesto for sustainability through flexibility and therefore has been a useful design tool in the final parts of the thesis project. Part three is a study of urban memory in Cape Town, focussing particularly on the narratives and histories surrounding the original Cape shoreline. This particualr focus was chosen as it provides a platform for an inclusive history, comprising of multiple narratives and memories. It is representative of the natural history of Cape Town (landscape, climate, water) and the human history of indigenious inhabitants, early explorers, colonial immigrants, convicts and slaves. This section represents the compilation of archival research, literature searches, site exploration and mapping exercises, which provide the basis for the later design project. The fourth part of this paper represents the design component of the thesis. It elucidates the different parts of the design project and the research and analysis which provide the groundwork for the design. This section does not represent the final design, but rather illustrates the key design ideas, concepts and processes which will lead to the final design proposal.

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