Returning through the origin

Abstract

A long-standing problem has been that humans have removed themselves from the natural lifecycle and are, therefore, acting in a dominant role, allowing the anthropogenic to overshadow the ecological. The lost relationship with nature is accentuated by our railways and highways, connecting people on a large scale, but isolating and homogenizing environments on a more intimate scale. The “green” infrastructure is suppressed and seen as an afterthought. This dissertation explores the potential for a bio-integration of infrastructures to assist in defining the space, currently in disarray, surrounding the chosen site at the Southern gateway to the city of Pretoria. This gateway is the only entrance to the city with a neigbouring nature reserve (Groenkloof) and, therefore, deemed a suitable site to facilitate an extension of the natural threshold. This will allow nature to penetrate from the peripheries of the city, by addressing the rigid boundaries created by grey infrastructure and envisioning ways to biointegrate these. The highway running through the gateway (Nelson Mandela Drive) will be developed as a celebratory route, on the basis of existing city frameworks. Therefore, my scheme will focus on recreation and handcraft skills development as a means to establish a lasting relationship with the natural and take advantage of the rich cultural history and strong educational presence of the area. The project I am proposing is a natural resources training facility. It will serve as a critique on the lost, once integral, relationship with the natural, manifesting as a physical and symbolic gateway to the genesis of a city. The objective is to explore how architecture can biointegrate the different layers of a city to restore the equilibrium in the relationship between humans and nature and thereby contributing to the ecological health of a city. A city infrastructural rethinking, where architecture can become a green infrastructural asset to the city. The landscape, through its mountains, valleys and rivers, will act as a practical and moral guide to the users of the city. A positive, sustainable relationship and education surrounding environmental literacy will be promoted by exposing ecological systems, specifically that of water, for what they are and could be. The existing spatial boundary between nature and urban will be re-envisioned to allow overlapping and a blur between the two, through the introduction of a series of smaller thresholds, morphing the urban with the natural. The newly invigorated natural relationship will serve to offer a sense of identity to the city dweller; an identity found in the natural and the origins of the city.