Abstract:
The influence of social constructs on the moral fibre and the nature of interactions within a community can never be over emphasized. Social constructs being tangible and intangible elements which form spaces within which communities interact with one another. Where social constructs are chaotic, conflicts within those communities are bound to follow. This has been observed in countries like Rwanda where inequalities among the different communities within the country led to genocide. This dissertation aims to investigate possibilities of using architecture as a tool to create opportunities for cultural and social integration thus encouraging a people to foster values of ‘otherness’ ‘selflessness’ and community. This will be achieved by constructing strong social networks (tangible and intangible) throughout an ethnically, and culturally diverse landscape, with an aim to contribute towards the upliftment of the immediate community. It is hoped that lessons learnt from this study could be of benefit to the South African society at large since the phenomenon observed within the communities being studied presents itself in other communities within the country as well. The anger so thick in the atmosphere, tension bound up into (the site) pockets, slowly strangle and suffocate her pillars, breaking them, forcing them into the ground, causing them to disappear in their turmoil, misunderstandings, and continuous drift and neglect. Tightening the bonds of individualistic interactions ignorance and “disconnectedness” forged by man’s forgetful nature of social ills he exists within. (a poem by the author, inspired by the site chosen for the dissertation)
