Building Landscapes : mending the fracture between cite' and ville through an urban architecture of place

Abstract

Fioramonti (Mtongana 2017) argues that the only way to maintain and preserve our social and ecological assets and create a sustainable future for humanity, is to place the well-being of man, nature and their relationship with each other, at the centre of development.

To better understand the consequences of modernity in cities today, the complexity of a city needs to be unpacked. Sennett (2018:2) conceptualises a city as a combination of cite’ and ville, where cite’ refers to the consciousness of place through its lived experiences and ville to the built environment. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, urban theorists have failed to successfully plan cities where ville, the built environment, and cite’, the lived experiences, seamlessly fit together (Sennett 2018:84). The remnants of this fracture between the knowledge of building i.e., ville, and the knowledge of living ie., cite’ is especially visible in the city of Pretoria.

Biljon (1993:42) argues that as a result of modernity and its preoccupation with growth, the city of Pretoria’s development focused mainly on developing ville through positivist planning schemes and as a result neglected cite’, and in so doing ‘lost’ the initial sense/character of place, of the city.

This dissertation will attempt to find ways in which architecture, through place-making, can improve the lived experiences of Pretoria’s citizens, in order to establish new relationships that are able to mend the fracture between cite’ and ville. By situating the investigation within Trevenna, adjacent to the Apies river, this dissertation is able to adopt the city of Tshwane’s regenerative vision, which encourages place-making as a means to celebrate the ‘lost’ character of Pretoria as a city that is part of the natural landscape (City of Tshwane 2013).