Indexicality & Interiority: addressing the role of interior architecture in informal settlements through a semiotic approach to meaning-making.

Abstract

The research project is focused on the notion of indexicality and interiority to address the role of interior architecture in informal settlements through a semiotic approach to meaning-making. The notion of semiotics is the common denominator between indexicality and interiority as it refers to the idiosyncratic interpretation of meaning in both language and spaces. A community office in Plastic View - a known space of mediation, knowledge transferal and expression – serves as an intrinsic case study for this research. Through a collaborative process and on-site prototyping, the project aspires to evoke the subjective phenomena of meaning-making through a series of objects, interfaces and spatial compositions.

This dissertation unpacks the inductive process and results thereof that unfold throughout the duration of the project. Through a constantly adapting methodology, due to unforeseen site circumstances, the pandemic and questioning assumptions, the importance of a collaborative process in the journey towards meaning-making became clear. The semiotic nature of the lingua franca S’pitori is used to generate a method of design that develops spatial responses based off very specific phenomena translated into generic design interventions that allow more scenarios of appropriation.

The methodology focused on prototyping as main spatial informant. The process of the prototyping was altered and readapted to either imitate the on-site prototyping process through individual prototyping or to cater for the unforeseen circumstances by including the collaborative prototyping in the technification stage of the project.

The role of interior architecture as a facilitator of meaning-making in informal settlements remains an obscure title but serves as a mediator between debated research practices of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches. The exploratory process embodies the notion of spatial agency which resulted in a proposed hand-made, self-constructed spatial structure for the community of Plastic View by the community of Plastic View.