Abstract:
Place and identity are bound to one another. The places we grow up in and the
places we inhabit in the city shape us and construct our identities. When humans
are displaced from original habitat and into another, a change in mental
construct occurs.
This dissertation explores notions of power and identity expressed in the
Union Buildings, as well as change in political regimes and the representation
of buildings under such regimes over the span of the Union Buildings from
their time of conception to current day. This will be investigated in terms of
the initiation school ritual using the backdrop of the Union Buildings as a
study into the possibility of a new programme allowing for a new image within
changing cultural beliefs. Whereas the current Union Buildings is representative
of the two cultural/political groups as means of reconciliation preceding
the Anglo Boer Wars, the proposed programme opens a new collective memory;
one which represents unity amongst all people in South Africa.
The architectural intent seeks to explore the relationship of Self and Other,
conceptually and physically, by confrontation or contestation of the existing
boundaries and controls that occur in and around the Union Buildings. Furthermore,
the architecture seeks to disrupt traditional notions of the plinth
and the boundary and introduces a third space in which the users of the space
can inhabit.
The project moves beyond representation of conflicted pasts in current museum
typologies, and enables the platform for a new identity to be formed,
both architecturally and in the selection of the programme. The proposed programme
of the political school facilitates the interception of the structure into
the Union Buildings by a forced interaction between the politicians and the
public.
