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Reconfiguring [con]text

Part 2 Project 2004
Desrae Dunn
 University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg | South Africa
“RECONFIGURING [CON]TEXT” investigates Alexandra township (Alex) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Alexandra has a rich past and was a place of resistance and free thought during Apartheid. The thesis stems from a quote from a documentary “Alex is a place that swallows its history”. (Young Lions 2001)

To facilitate multiple and diverse narratives about Alex’s past, present and future, a loose SYSTEM was proposed where RECORDING, STORING and BROADCASTING are inter-linked.

The primary focus is the ‘storing’ component or archive within this system. The challenge was how to activate the archive for the layman and enable people to critically question the archive as a system and a construct.


This project was chosen for its identification of the importance of narrative and story for the re-imagining of the apartheid city. In the absence of a recorded history, or rather in the face of removals and eradications, much of this city is reclaimed through the telling of story’s about place, time, event, celebration and loss.

The project provides a facility for the recording, storing and broadcasting of stories about life in Alexandra Township, in the heart of the city of Johannesburg. These are thereby transformed into a resource for the re-imagining of the city in accordance with the lives and experiences of those who live there.
2004
The thesis looked at ways to reconfigure and uncover the history within a previously proactive oral culture which is now being lost within the transience of a changing regime in South Africa.
A loose system of flexible spaces was proposed which can tap into the existing pedestrian and social networks existing in Alex which integrates recording, storing and broadcasting narratives
By gaining an understanding of the grand and suppressed narrative of archiving and history, the thesis attempts to develop a living archive which empowers the users and creates community involvement.
The buildings juxtaposed between shack-scape and abandoned warehouses, which informs the massing, views, scale and movement routes set up through the building and site
Towers representing names of Alex through history, fragment a linear and prescriptive narrative and allow the user to develop their own understanding of Alex on the multiple levels of the building and roofscape.
Within the archive the towers act as memory boxes which spiral down an exhibition ramp culminating in an ever growing archive where locals and tourists alike can submit or record their input through writing, objects or audio and visual media.
The ‘living’ archive interacts with everyday programmes; the archive thus becomes a place in the psyche of the community and not a dead building holding dead memories.
Event and subsidiary spaces surrounding the archive are loose and flexible. This enables growth and change to take place, but also caters for the entrepreneurial spirit of Alex where economic and spatial limitations suggest multiuse spaces.
Narratives of potential users were explored which helped the development of the internal and external experience of the building and aided the poetics of spaces, their interrelationships or fragmentation through the movement of people.
First floor plan showing pedestrian ramp linking into Alexandra blocks. The ramp dissects the building and sets up hierarchies of space and entrance to the building.
Second floor plan showing the roof-scape as a social platform.
The sections explore the interrelationships of programme & spaces as one moves through the building. The building buries itself into the landscape creating a sense of permanence, yet the fragmented towers allow the history to be questioned & reconfigured
The elevations show a robust yet eclectic use of materials and forms which capture the vibrancy of the ‘shack-scape’ surrounding and the Alexandrian's aspirations.
Model picture showing view into archive, orientation room and glass bridge into the library.
Model picture showing building within the context of the warehouses and landscape.
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