Browsing by Subject "geomatics"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Analysis of the military hospital, Port Louis, Mauritius
    (2023) Makins, Tessa; Roux, Naomi
    Through a case study of the Military Hospital Complex in Port Louis, Mauritius, the influence of the World Heritage Program of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisiation (UNESCO), in Mauritius is analysed. The new Intercontinental Slavery Museum, a destination on the UNESCO Slave Route, is housed in the Military Hospital Complex. The museum's stated intention is to narrate the shared history of all Mauritians, regardless of their provenance. It aims to explain the role played by the island as a pivotal connection point in the Indian Ocean slave trade from the 18th Century. The Military Hospital Complex is the oldest surviving building on the island (completed 1740). It was built by the French colonists, Mauritius' first permanent inhabitants. The building has a multi-layered history as it has been integral to life on the island, through changing administrations for more than 280 years. The role of the building has adapted over its life span, reflecting the changing political and social dynamics of the country. Responding to the forces of globalisation in the 1990s the Government of Mauritius engaged with the UNESCO World Heritage Program. The focus of this analysis is on how this Government engagement with UNESCO has affected the creation of modern heritage resources within the country through this case study of the Military Hospital Complex as the Intercontinental Slavery Museum. Methods employed have been to obtain a biographical understanding of the building through archival research, site visits and relevant literature. The historical, political, social, and legislative context of the building over its life, and relating to its transformation into a modern heritage resource have been investigated through relevant literature. Theoretical frameworks of heritage construction in multi-cultural societies have been employed in guiding this research. The UNESCO World Heritage Conventions are discussed, in addition to the various UNESCO treaties, declarations and programs that cumulatively influenced the realisation of Mauritius' World Heritage Sites. The social processes within the country that led to the Truth and Justice Commission in 2010 are investigated. One of the principal recommendations of the Truth and Justice Commission of Mauritius was the creation of a new Intercontinental Slavery Museum in Port Louis. The political ramifications of Mauritius' two World Heritage Sites within the local and global contexts are discussed. The Mauritian political construct that defines the population into groups based on the places of origin of their forebears is at the heart of the way modern heritage has been constructed in the country in association with UNESCO to date. Heritage remains contested and highly politicised in the country. This study has been limited by the politically sensitive nature of heritage within the country and interviews were difficult to secure. The difficulties encountered in conducting research for this analysis has affirmed that these sensitivities prevail. Almost without exception, government officials, heritage professionals and academics were reluctant to discuss the heritage program of the country on or off the record. The researcher was denied access to the case study building. This research concludes that although the vison of Mauritius' new Intercontinental Slavery Museum (housed in the Military Hospital Complex), is comprehensive and inclusive, the political construct of the country remains an impediment to the narration of Mauritian heritage. The heritages of the different groups of people who collectively comprise the Mauritian population have, to date, been separately told. The new museum has a role to pay in narrating the role played by Mauritius within the Indian Ocean slave trade, a story that has relevance to all Mauritians regardless of their population group.
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    Building Nurture: Care and Protection of the Growing through the Built Environment
    (2023) Dill, Alexandra; Louw, Michael; Isaacs, Fadly
    South Africa's tumultuous and oppressive past has given rise to a ubiquitous inequality in the country. This inequality has manifested itself in disparate access to essential needs including but not limited to adequate housing, education, sanitation, job opportunities and child care amongst others. Limited access to the aforementioned, on top of the exponential growth of South Africa's population, has left many in extremely undesirable living conditions and immense poverty. These ubiquitous issues have not gone unnoticed and there have been many attempts to better these conditions through a top-down approach – for example, provision of housing and affirmative action through employment opportunities. However, what these topdown approaches fail to tackle is the problems at their conception. The betterment of the country lies in the nurturing of its growing communities, especially its youth. Nurturance as an attempt to care and protect that which is growing both at the community and individual scale. This project aims to find a way in which to achieve nurturance through the built environment and tests ideas of integrative design that protects and cares for the growing impoverished population and the children that are born into it through physical intervention. It will be an attempt to lift people out of the cycle of poverty at its root through empowerment of both impoverished communities and the children born into them. This intervention will be designed and tested in the community of Vrygrond, one of the Western Cape's oldest informal settlements, which is a prime example of a continuously growing settlement with a very large young population. The site is located in the nucleus of the settlement as a symbolic embedding of a child-centred programme into the informal urban environment. This acknowledges the imperative need for child-centred spaces by weaving it into the pre-existing built fabric.
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    [Co]Building for A displaced community: the conduction of place-making strategies as a means of addressing spatial segregation
    (2023) Davids, Ismaeel; Le Grange, Simone
    The provision of adequately -designed housing alone will not eradicate poverty, and on its own, will not completely change the quality of life of people living in the Cape Flats area. The dissemination of houses has marginalized its recipients and disrupted communities through prescriptive and homogenous development that was brought about through Apartheid spatial planning. The appalling planning of housing typologies and poorly defined residual spaces that make up most of the Cape Flats have resulted in a series of neighbourhoods that sorely lack a sense of place. This dissertation examines the topics of: resilience, claiming the right to space, amenities and place-making in the face of adversity within Hanover Park. My aim is to draw inspiration from the existing infill spaces that subsequently manifests into a speculative design proposal to harness ideas of polyvalency and heterogeneity which will aid in alleviating the cycle of poverty. How can Hanover Park's poorly defined residual spaces within the existing stagnant built form be improved to enable communities to participate in the process of place -making? Further, how can a reimagination and adaption to existing fabric be modified to allow for sensitive and careful expansion in support of creating well-defined public and private spaces? The conclusions drawn from this line of enquiry should lend itself to a clearer understanding of the opportunity that lies within Hanover Park's unheld residual spaces to house the diverse pool of micro-enterprises and activities that transpire in the community. Further, it heroes a system of community-embodied spatial design as an act of resistance to histories of forced removals and displacement.
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    Land and housing practices in Namibia: cases of access to land rights and production of housing in Windhoek, Oshakati and Gobabis
    (2019) Delgado, Guillermo; Odendaal, Nancy; Watson, Vanessa
    As in many other places, socio-spatial production in modern Namibia has been a top-down practice approached in professionalised and standards-oriented ways, focused on outputs. 'Participation’ or involvement of 'beneficiaries’ has over time been added to the repertoire of such practices, but this remains driven by a one-dimensional definition of what’s 'better’. Even when the modernist and centrally-controlled practice of Apartheid is generally condemned, its ways with regards to spatial production remain largely unquestioned and, by consequence, preserved and expanded. At the same time, the urban transformation that Namibia has seen in recent decades has been astonishing. These changes expose the limits of previous approaches and at the same time lay bare new openings for socio-spatial production. There are various practices that have been part of this urban transformation, but they remain largely undocumented. Furthermore, even when they are approached, they tend to be assessed in terms of their outcomes; relegating the ways of the process as a matter of lesser importance. My research accounts for three practices of socio-spatial production in three urban areas in Namibia today. These spaces have been the result of a considerable number of iterations, and have been made possible through the contribution of a wide array of participants; many of them performing beyond their 'main’ role. I have documented these practices from their beginnings up to the point in which they are today. My research is structured as a case study. Within it, I have undertaken semi-structured qualitative interviews with participants, and also employed maps, official documents, and photographs to triangulate the accounts. I have then brought these together with debates on co-production and autogestion, exploring whether the practices can be understood in these terms. Other subsidiary debates fundamentally related to these two are those on state and civil-society divisions; the nature of grassroots associations ('social movements’); and on-going and long-standing debates on land and housing. My analysis suggests that, while the way in which the practices take place varies greatly, they can be considered the sites of various kinds of innovation. I have also found that the 4 ways of the grassroots, while having legitimacy and equality as strong values, show new options in terms of representation. I have found that co-production, as understood in the more recent literature, is a useful way to understand the practices, particularly if a variety of strategies is recognised. Autogestion is a useful term to keep in mind, and although such term has some overlaps with the recent concepts of autogestion, only some understandings of the term stemming from practice enable a reading of the cases I document. The division between civil society and the state today consists of a constellation of parties not necessarily fitting in these two categories. The practices stand also as the more recent evidence within a trajectory of production of space undertaken through a social process involving the grassroots in Namibia, one in which visibility and participation are no longer the only aims, but where negotiation and some degree of autonomy is sought. Lastly, land ownership (real or perceived) emerges as a powerful force in making the process collective and enabling socio-spatial development. Land rights are exercised throughout, often irrespective of the degree of de jure tenure at stake. Housing becomes a devise for savings and resource mobilisation, as well as an income-generating activity sometimes enabling further livelihoods. My study adds to on-going debates on co-production, and to some extent to those on autogestion. For the first, it expands on earlier observations that brought the term to the socio-spatial realm and provides new openings for the term to establish bridges to other debates. It also contributes to the archive of socio-spatial practices in Namibia, and to the pending project of a socio-spatial history of the country. It provides new insights for those engaged in socio-spatial production of what are the experiences and the openings for a new kind of practice that moves away from the assumptions that have placed us in the urban crisis that characterises our times.
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    Seeking sanctum, a space for healing
    (2023) Argue, Deva; Steenkamp, Alta
    Bearing witness to domestic violence and the crippling nature of trauma drives the interest in designing healing spaces for women and children. A person of inspiration and countless similar stories have resulted in the dissertation topic of a sanctuary, for women and children, as a space of healing and protection. The proposal is informed by research into feminist perspectives on space-making, phenomenology as a design tool to bring meaning to spaces, and responsive architecture as a way of deeply understanding and responding to site, context, and the community in an impactful and connected way. Two key issues are highlighted from the research and experiences of others, firstly that of needing to provide a space that feels homely and safe, not sterile and clinical, and secondly, that of providing access to facilitated healing and empowerment: with access to support, skills training, workspaces, connections, and nature. The resulting proposal is situated in Hout Bay, adjacent to a wetland, offering accessibility, access to nature, as well as an inherent sense of sanctuary. The design explores the juxtaposition between protection and openness by layering spaces to offer varying degrees of privacy, also using materials to explore solidity and transparency, heaviness, and lightness. Protective thresholds frame and enclose spaces, giving way to openness. Grounded programme is contrasted by the lifting of the most private spaces. More broadly the juxtaposition between public and very private is also explored, where the normative practice of radically disconnecting healing process from ‘normal' daily life is challenged. Important to the design as a whole is for the sanctuary to offer nurturing to both the inhabitants and to the landscape.
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    The landscapes we eat: reconnecting people to food production through agri-toursim
    (2023) Friederich, Yann; Hindes, Clinton
    The production of the food we eat has an effect on the landscapes around us, from deforestation, to air and water pollution. The world grows 95% of its food in the uppermost layer of soil, making topsoil one of the most important components of our food system. Current conventional agricultural practices unfortunately degrade our soils. If we continue to degrade the soil at the rate we are now, the world could run out of topsoil in 60 years. If we want to repair our soils, we have to change the way we farm, to change the way we farm we have to change the way we consume. To change the way we consume we have to learn how our food is produced and the impacts thereof. My thesis intents to create a demonstration site where people can learn about various soil creation processes, whilst experiencing a landscape with rare and beautiful heritage. With the improvement of the socioeconomic and ecological conditions of the local community at the forefront.