Crafting endurance: Form, time, space, and memory in the construction of a civic urban artefact for Cape Town s east city

De Gouveia, Kelly

Crafting endurance: Form, time, space, and memory in the construction of a civic urban artefact for Cape Town s east city

Thesis / Dissertation

2024

Abstract

The speed of technological advancement and increased demands of industrialization have given rise to expedient, rushed, and wasteful trends in urban development. This has ultimately led to the privatization and fragmentation of cities, hindering the potential for civic life to occur. Extending beyond the realm of urban design, rapid urbanization has had implications in the field of architecture, where increased economic pressures have compromised the quality of buildings and the length of their lifespans. Situated within the context of Cape Town's East City, this dissertation aims to counteract this trend in the design proposal of a new civic stitch intervention which employs time, form, space, and memory to pull existing civic life from the City Centre into the scarred urban fabric of District Six. The proposed design intervention aims to reinforce the concept of endurance as a more sustainable approach to architecture and urban development which prioritizes longevity, resilience, and durability. By doing so, architecture becomes more than a product of expediency, but rather a carefully crafted urban artefact which supports the continuity of civic life and imbues the city with meaning and collective memory

Keywords

Architecture, Planning and Geomatics

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