Investigating the Agency of the Architect in Post-Apartheid ‘Place-Making’

In: Dialectics of Space and Place across Virtual and Corporeal Topographies
Author:
June Jordaan
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Around midnight, one month after the opening of the Nyanga Bathhouse, in an informal settlement outside Cape Town, vandals started infiltrating the premises. The damage caused was so severe that the building was demolished shortly thereafter. Two years earlier this scheme had been nominated for an Architectural Award of Merit. This example is not idiosyncratic and brings to light that there exist dependencies and presences that lie outside the direct control of the architect. This prompts the question: to what extent do these contingencies impact on the architect’s agency of ‘place-making’? For architects, place can be understood as space, created by form, with varying degrees of meaning and significance in time. The spatial characteristics of place can be grouped into the following categories: tangible versus intangible space, infinite versus finite space, meaningful and embodied space. By making reference to these existing spatial theories, this chapter will develop a spatial triad and apply it to a unique South African place, the Cape Town Railway Station. This building underwent three major architectural interventions over time that highlights successive imaginings by architects that have sought to interpret the meaning and significance of a singular site. By doing so this study hopes to illustrate how a multidimensional approach to place, that incorporates time, may explicate dependencies and presences that lie outside the realm of the architect. Furthermore, it aims to provide insight into the agency of the architect in ‘place-making’ in post-apartheid South Africa.

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