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Bringing Justice in Planning Public Projects: Design as a Tool for Participation
Introduction The word ‘city’ is derived from the French word ‘cité’ meaning town. Around the sixteenth century, the idea of city came to represent the character of life in a neighborhood, the feeling people harbored about neighbors and strangers and attachments to place.[1] I’m personally more fond of the cite’s anthropological consciousness; which describes it…
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DECOLONIALITY AND ITS TECHNOLOGICAL INTEPRETATIONS.
Project introduction The project aimed to create a poster that critically reviews literature based on architecture and visually represents their interpretation. The poster was created by Akheel Khan, Nhlanzeko Mbatha and myself Kekelwa Akombelwa. Through a series of posters, we discussed how alternative knowledge production systems can encourage a holistic view of ecological sustainability. We…
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Informal Metabolism
RETHINKING THE METABOLIST URBAN UTOPIAS TO ADDRESS URBAN INFORMALITY How do we search for subaltern solutions to the insatiable need for safe and affordable housing in our systemically and spatially oppressive urban environments? Can the successes and failures of previous architectural movements inform our approach towards understanding and tackling urban informality? Completed as part of…
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Radical Materials [brick-collage]
![Radical Materials [brick-collage]](https://justspatialdesignza.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/senzo-1.jpg?w=1024)
Radical Materials [brick-collage] Modern material handling requires revolutionary thinking. With the increasing scarcity of virgin raw materials, demolition sites represent an untapped resource, a stockpile of potentially valuable, pre-used materials. This project aims to re-think waste by designing a catalogue of new materials with it. However, its purpose is not to debate the pros and…
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The Suburban Commune: A case for Johannesburg
The suburban commune is a motivation for developing a different social structure, it is not a utopia, perhaps overly optimistic. The suburban commune intends to highlight the opportunities of a shared living. An idea to readjust South African cities for better spatial justice and encourage household agency and development, to restructure the sprawling suburbs for…
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(En)Countering Archive
Meditating on…Writing In the past few years there have been several new publications, writings, considerations and contemplations around the concept of archive, its making process, meanings, ideologies, manifestations and contestation. This piece is a meditation on what it would mean to contest the ‘archive’ through a post-colonial approach; it contemplates an alternate counter-archive, embedded in…
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Migration as Cosmological Technic
Questions on Cyclical Migration Why do Tswana tribes amongst other tribal groups in Southern Africa cyclically migrate? This is a story of the Barolong Boo Rra Tshidi clan of the Tswana tribe who have now settled in Makgobistad. Makgobistad is a large village situated in the northern part of the North West province, on the…
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Urban development in Northern Namibia: Questions around the displacement of local spatial practices
There was little to no specific interest on the spatial development in northern Namibia towns, how they could be responsive to existing practices, and how existing domestic practices could be integrated into urban development and planning processes.
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The Center, the In-Between and the Periphery
I have a keen interest in cities and the urbanisation process. I can trace this interest to my experiences growing up in an apartheid era black township. I feel this has increased my awareness of the challenges of housing, economic development, and the lack of social integration my home in Soweto has with the rest…
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Surveillance and Civic Institutions: A presence and/or absence
This article has been developed as an excerpt from my Masters’ Thesis Project developed at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg, South Africa in GSA Unit 14 GSA Unit 14 reinforces its interest in Rogue Economies – those subversive economic practices, tactics and transactions that shape contemporary Johannesburg in bewildering dramatic ways. As…
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COVID-19 and the concept of “Urban Triage”
Re-Blogged from Point of View by: The concept of ‘Triage’ in medical terms refers to “the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties.” Could we apply this term to thinking in urban terms to repurpose elements of the city…
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The Anti-Atlas
This project started with a map, a 1930 colonial map of Dar es Salaam created during the British administration. I couldn’t help but be enticed by the beautifully drawn, meticulous historical maps I found in the library of Ardhi University during our field trip to Dar es Salaam. Fuelled by my interest in stories, I…
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South African Backyard Rentals: A Case for Support
Backyard rental accommodation is a prominent practice within South Africa’s current set of housing options. Despite the immense popularity and prevalence of this form of housing – possibly due to its lower visual prominence in comparison to informal settlements – it has been largely neglected by policymakers and researchers until fairly recently (Scheba & Turok,…
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Community Caution
“ …this project exemplifies community architecture…”, “…the community built this structure….”, “…the community protested against…”, ”..the community agreed with….” When one read these sentences captured in the above picture, hears these When one reads these sentences captured in the above picture, hears these phrases, or even shares these words in your practice or institutional spaces,…
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No Such thing as a Community Centre – Workshops
The first workshop which was funded by the CTIN grant received by 1to1, served our needs to facilitate a shared learning experience between our researchers, who we identified via a social media call and by reaching out to youth activists in our network. We hosted a workshop at the Tshimologong Hub where we unpacked the…
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Challenging Practice @ UJ
Since 2013 1to1 has been teaching in the Professional Practice module of the University of Johannesburg’s Masters program. Each year we have asked the students to submit their work on this platform to grow and deepen these questions on critical engagement and spatial justice in South Africa. Their work is carefully documented and shared by…
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Hactivate: Vrededorp
1to1, alongside a group of former interns and students, set out to develop a mechanism to support recently graduated students of spatial design. Through a series of discussions and workshops the collaboration formed an idea of developing a series of action research workshops that give current students and pre-professionals a flexible and open space to […]…
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Methods of Engagement
The critical practice module at the GSA was held at the beginning of the year, unlike previous years. This allowed us to respond to previous years’ feedback requesting the course be at the beginning of the year – because of the type of commitment the course requires and the course’s tendency to act as a…
Jus't Spatial Design ZA
a South(ern) African Socio-Technical Design Support Resource
Jus't Spatial Design ZA 