black grey white : to pimp a butterfly

Abstract

Barker (2015) argues that the making of architecture is a mediative approach to understanding the relationship between the strange and the familiar. He regards this processes as an act which gives an identity to the architecture made because it does not only focus on one aspect of creating an architecture nor does it focus on the creation of a completely new architecture but draws understanding from a narration of architectural interpretations to continue the continuum of thinking in the architectural discourse (Barker, 2012). This document furthers Barker’s (2015) argument by investigating the architecture which is considered familiar by its makers and the discipline but could be strange to the end-user or the social context, this is done to draw up principles of making familiar architecture within the South African context and using them to inform the making of an appropriate architecture which is assumed strange in its context. To investigate this, a study of the formation of the South African architectural vernaculars is conducted through the scrutiny of the work done by Fisher(1998,2003), Barker (2012,2015) and Pienaar (2014). This is done to gather an understanding of what informed the architecture created in South Africa during apartheid so that a proposal of what could inform an architecture identifying in South African in democracy can be explored. Secondly, the investigation is conducted in Mamelodi which according to De waal in Nice (2008) is a black township created by the apartheid government in 1945. The University of Pretoria’s Mamelodi campus is the exact area of study as it is assumed in this document as a strange area to create an architecture that is identified as familiar to the Afrikaners (Barker,2015) in an all-black community. The scrutiny of Fisher(1998,2003), Barker (2012,2015) and Pienaar (2014) work provides has with an investigative lens around the theory of Identity and architecture symbolizing narrative of the Great Trek, therefore encouraging the document to explore issues of Identity informing the making of architecture and the theory of symbolism and metaphors as carriers of a narrative through architecture. Therefore this document will be investigating the making of architecture through the theories of identity, symbolism, and metaphor. It will outline a narrative as the driver of the design process and with propose and appropriate architectural response which can be considered as an approach to making public architecture in Mamelodi