A language and storytelling centre

Abstract

This dissertation explores the creation of a space that highlights culture and heritage through the study, documentation and expression of oral language. The space is within an established urban environment, responsive to its vibrant physical, historical and social African context. Pretoria is a complex construct of two different spatial perceptions; built by a society from european heritage but now used mostly by people with an african heritage who were excluded from the urban development processes until recently. The laws and systems used today are still based on european urban ideals and thereby spaces keep being created from a spatial perspective different to that of the actual city user who perceives space from a communal point of view. The focus on individual ownership needs to change to take advantage of the urban opportunities and complex relations that exist in the city. Democratic, non-prescriptive spaces that celebrate the community over the individual are created by focusing on spatial experience and appropriate contextual and social responses, rather than on creating aesthetically appealling objects in space. Such spaces will be adopted into the flows and connections of the city encouraging the users to engage with them and turning them into temporal and used, event spaces. The city therefore emerges as a backdrop to the stage of life.