TRANSIENTS Part 2 Project 1999 Morag Campbell University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg | South Africa I feel the emerging spatial occupation has the potential to inform architectural design.Acknowledgement of this change and redefinition of spatial occupation in the contemporary InnerCity, Johannesburg, demands an understanding of the complex demands presently made on space.An appropriate response to these new social configurations necessitates an understanding of howindividuals create, define and occupy their own space on a temporary basis within the city. Validityis given to ways, outside of the formal process, to spatial occupation of individuals previouslymarginalised by bipolar separation. A process of discovery through systematic research into theinhabitants of the city space established a dialogue, and acted as basis for transformation in thecreation of spaces that prepare the grounds for multiple transient occupations. The built environment is conceived as a heterogeneous organism that functions through thedemocratic framework and thereby challenges the previous static hierarchical architectural models.Investigations into this temporal possibility of the new urban African city, evolved into a newinterpretation and understanding of the inter-relationships between the public and private agenda.This design intervention is an investigation into the nature of an organisational enabling frameworkthat promotes individuals to transiently take possession of space while functioning within theplurality of the urban fabric, thus promoting the coexistence of regulated and deregulated activities.Site specific and issue based, it is a quest for spatial comprehension of the complex interdependentand interconnected relationships between different activities, and built form. Please note, that slides are complemented by a more complete set of drawings attached in A3portfolio; transients - an approach to the evolving public realm of the inner city, Johannesburg.morag joy campbell | university of witwatersrand | south africa Morag Campbell TOPICAL THINKING - framed the discourse for the 1998 THESIS Bachelor of Architectureprogram. Although 'design discourse' in the Department of Architecture is directed at independent inquiry,current investigations by thesis candidates have tended to reflect the events and concerns in thecontemporary SA city. The city, as perhaps the highest form of built human expression, therefore, becomesa natural locus for speculation and thinking topically. Individual topics have been specifically identifiedthrough a process of research around issues of transformation in relation to emerging political processes,as well as to contemporary architectural theory. In particular, the critique of type and its associativelimitations in relation to the assumptions and certainty associated with the position have predominated. The discretionary influence of both precedent and the linear method promoted by this departments conception of architectural history demandsdirect confrontation. Site and Program have been interpreted as verbs demanding a researched and argueduncovering of 'siting and programming' as core design generators. These issues have been re-interpretedthrough a 'narrative process' whereby interactive exercises sought to provoke difference and effect new sets of social arrangements. Consequently, process has been privileged above that of final product, in an attempt to overturn the other hegemony of material culture which seems to be the predominant global value. Phenomenal experience and temporal possibility have become checks for developing a thoughtful andresilient material culture within the architectural inquiry.Selected for its provocative and meaningful contribution to debates surrounding the post-apartheid city, Morag's project, has evolved an intelligent response to conditions of nomadism in the inner city. Through in depth readings of cultural constructs in the emerging city, her project has set new spatial relations for addressing the condition 'Inter-modal Transit and Informal Trade' in the transforming city. It has been thinking process rather than formal resolution that has premiated the selection.