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Locating Displacement | Representing Difference

Part 2 Project 2003
Dieter Brandt
Deokjae Kim
 University of Cape Town | South Africa
Passing migrants, refugees seeking refuge, and host communities fighting to sustain themselves against local and global forces, all share the experience of Displacement.

Physical space can play a role in facilitating change and lessening the harsh effects on displaced communities. The premise of my project is that the establishment of a “third space” in an attempt to alleviate this condition.

To this end I have inserted a Gateway House for Refugees in a selected Host Environment that will provide access to basic needs, in turn supporting the ideal of integration between groups that might well be in contest with each.



TOPICAL THINKING - frames discourse in the B. Arch thesis program. Whilst ‘design discourse' in the School of Architecture is directed at independent inquiry, current investigations by thesis candidates tends to reflect the events and concerns in the contemporary SA city. The city, as perhaps the highest form of built human expression, therefore, becomes a natural locus for speculation and thinking topically. Individual topics have been specifically identified through 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 associative limitations in relation to the assumptions and certainty associated with the <western|apartheid|colonial> position have predominated. Site and Program have been interpreted as verbs demanding a researched and argued uncovering of ‘siting and programming' as core design generators. These issues have been re-interpreted through 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 and resilient material culture within the architectural inquiry.

Dieter's scheme is selected for its provocative and meaningful contribution to debate surrounding the post-apartheid city. ‘Locating Displacement|Representing Difference' evolves a thoughtful and intelligent response to conditions of change in the inner city of Capetown. Through in-depth readings of cultural constructs in the emerging city, his project posits new spatial relations for addressing the condition of the transforming city. With this submission, it has been the topic and the thinking process, as opposed to formal resolution that premiated selection. Essential to its premise, ‘the making of a third space' is the devaluation of form and the elevation of space, or that emptiness wherein difference can be encountered.


Tutor(s)
2003
IDENTIFYING THE PREMISE: Locating Displacement| Representing Difference. The making of a ‘Third Space’ for the exchange of values, meanings and memories between displaced groups at Woodstock Station, Cape Town.
QAULITATIVE SITE MAPPING: Movement, Position & Practice. Migrants passing through, Refugees seeking Refuge, & Host Communities fighting to sustain themselves against global & local forces all share the experience of displacement.
QAULITATIVE SITE MAPPING: Identification of Sites of Power that effect displacement in Lower Woodstock. The spaces inhabited by these destabilized communities have become characterized as contested terrain.
LOCATING DISPLACEMENT: Positioning of a ‘Third space’ at Woodstock Station; a lost space at the intersection of sites of power.
URBAN PATTERNS: Instrument, Receptacle & Staging. Iterative conditions of displacement measured at critical continuity lines through the built fabric.
WOODSTOCK TYPOLGY STUDY: Staging of Displacement. The record of selected residential and mixed-use spatial practices along the continuity line to identify ‘Third Space’ generators.
REPRESENTING DIFFERENCE: Synthesizing the studies. Identifying the staging of displacement across the selected conditions; Public| Private; Residential| Mixed-Use; Locality| Neighborhood.
REPRESENTING DIFFERENCE: Translating the Studies. Interpretation of the generators at the site of intervention, through ‘Third Space’ ordering devices; Street & Square, Shared Kitchen, Arcade, Court & Bath-House
STUDY MODEL
EARLY SPECULATION FOR A GATEWAY HOUSE
SITE INTERVENTION: Public Programming of the urban surface in support of a ‘Third Space’
BUILDING INTERVENTION: Public| Private Programming of the building intervention and the existing (blue), Woodstock Station House.
BUILDING INTERVENTION: a ‘Third Space’ interface between rail movement and urban fabric.
MODEL: Indicating BATHHOUSE, COURT, ARCADE, STREET & SQAURE.
MODEL
SECTIONAL CONFLUENCE OF ‘Third Space s’: Receptacle, Instrument, & Staging. Translation of continuity line at site intervention.
THINKING, MAKING & INTERPRETATION: Tectonic Study as Representation of local building practice.
SECTION
CONFLUENCE of ‘Third Space’
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