A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Exploring ‘place-making,’ city squares & other places: Cape Town’s pre-apartheid spatial politics
This paper explores the theoretical problems, contradictions and limits that architecturally-oriented 'place-making,' and the 'city square' typological thrust of place-making, evokes. The first part of this paper is a sketching out of some of the key architectural theorists and ideas in relation to form, space and place. It points to the limiting understanding of place-making essentially as an act of enclosure whose centring spatiality purports to be a 'healing' instrument through which the excesses of modernism and apartheid's 'space' might be redressed. As a counterpoint to the humanist positions of Norberg-Schulz and Kevin Lynch, the potential for 'place' to be the nexus of asymmetrical power relations is also investigated; place is set in contrast to the possible liberating potential of 'the city'. The final section of the first part of this paper looks at Deleuze and Guattari's conceptual schemas of 'smooth' and 'striated' space in considering the conservative function of architecture in society. The second part of this paper examines three pre-apartheid places in Cape Town, namely, Wells Square in erstwhile District Six, the Roeland Street housing scheme, and the Cape Dutch manor house Groot Constantia. These case studies demonstrate the limits and efficacy of place-making theory in dealing with the complexities of ideologically-loaded contexts. Groot Constantia's 'object building' imageability produced it as a flattened place that was filled with normalising and conservative identities such as nation and race. On the other hand, the spatially fractured Wells Square was erased from District Six because of its dangerous potential as a Deleuzian 'smooth' space. Finally, the Roeland Street scheme confirms the power that modernist space had in limiting the liberating potential of the spatiality of the pre-apartheid city. I conclude by using the ideas in both parts, as well as ideas about power and visuality as a means to reflect on what I think are important issues when it comes to form, space and place.
Exploring ‘place-making,’ city squares & other places: Cape Town’s pre-apartheid spatial politics
This paper explores the theoretical problems, contradictions and limits that architecturally-oriented 'place-making,' and the 'city square' typological thrust of place-making, evokes. The first part of this paper is a sketching out of some of the key architectural theorists and ideas in relation to form, space and place. It points to the limiting understanding of place-making essentially as an act of enclosure whose centring spatiality purports to be a 'healing' instrument through which the excesses of modernism and apartheid's 'space' might be redressed. As a counterpoint to the humanist positions of Norberg-Schulz and Kevin Lynch, the potential for 'place' to be the nexus of asymmetrical power relations is also investigated; place is set in contrast to the possible liberating potential of 'the city'. The final section of the first part of this paper looks at Deleuze and Guattari's conceptual schemas of 'smooth' and 'striated' space in considering the conservative function of architecture in society. The second part of this paper examines three pre-apartheid places in Cape Town, namely, Wells Square in erstwhile District Six, the Roeland Street housing scheme, and the Cape Dutch manor house Groot Constantia. These case studies demonstrate the limits and efficacy of place-making theory in dealing with the complexities of ideologically-loaded contexts. Groot Constantia's 'object building' imageability produced it as a flattened place that was filled with normalising and conservative identities such as nation and race. On the other hand, the spatially fractured Wells Square was erased from District Six because of its dangerous potential as a Deleuzian 'smooth' space. Finally, the Roeland Street scheme confirms the power that modernist space had in limiting the liberating potential of the spatiality of the pre-apartheid city. I conclude by using the ideas in both parts, as well as ideas about power and visuality as a means to reflect on what I think are important issues when it comes to form, space and place.
Exploring ‘place-making,’ city squares & other places: Cape Town’s pre-apartheid spatial politics
Coetzer, Nic (author)
2008-01-01
South African Journal of Art History ; https://journals.co.za/content/journal/sajah
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
720
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