Interface : a new political landscape at the union buildings

Abstract

A Political Theatre, Think Tank and School of Representation at the Union Buildings are created in response to questions regarding identity, authenticity and authority within post-1994 South African Architecture. The design is investigated by means of a journey through power, the urban and the memory of architecture. Autonomy is proposed as a more appropriate means of representing power constructions than the often-quoted riposte of transparency. The project of the Italian Rationalists is remembered and through it, the productive repetition that is an inherent aspect of typological design is harnessed in order to return power to form. All form is situated within a process of eternal return, and defamiliarisation is utilised as a strategy to ask questions about and through architecture. The interface between land and building is cast in a hierarchical role, where architecture becomes a mask to the landscape as an analogy for the political mask and the various guises assumed in the representation of identities, both personal and architectural.