Abstract
This Major Design project investigates potential futures of food security through abstraction, steel models and photomontage – like the work of Hannah Hoch a German Artist of the early 20th century(MoMA; 2021) ,as a means of challenging conventional architectural representation, through the creation and exploration of apologue. An Apologue being a children’s story with a moral underlying theme, the project will be executed in such a way that the understanding of food security to a child’s benefit is an impervious aspect of the project. Inspired by a personal memory of a younger version of myself which echoes in my experiences of food association to financial security. The project will be directed at the exploration of current food technologies to remediate the chosen site.
The project explores a site located in City Deep – the City Deep Old Mine Tailing Heap adjacent to Joburg Fresh, as a location of exploration of the role of memorialisation in food production and its overall suitability for food production as a method of regeneration and reconciliation of similar
they tend to be located centerally to dense built environments within range of nodes or busy areas to maximise the importance of the memorial site. (Stevens & Franck, 2016 ; 193 ) This idea of removing memorialisation from a space of occurrence to a space of reflection and remediation is where the apologue of my project will investigate. Mining is the foundation of our economy in the past and with that these toxic sites have a stigma in the way memories of South Africans find identity in the 21st century.(De Lange, Funke, Oelofse, Nortje ; 2019). If Memorial landscapes are spaces of social justice (Light and Young; 2015) why is there a stigma of commercialisation around these spaces.
As a result of both the projects chosen undertaking of experimentation with food production technologies and the site of a scarred landscape, the project precursors the critical evaluation of the role of memorialisation.Through food production spacial. According to Adul Kodir, Djoko M, Herman Hareuman and Irdika Mansure in the publication of “Integrated post mining landscape for sustainable land use: A case study in South Sumatera, Indonesia”, in section 3 they outline their findings of their study of an ex coal mine’s viability and the suitability of a regeneration plan to the landscape. Their conclusions were that the landscape is not only viable but incredibly well suited to the practice of food production. This case study indicates that the climate of Indonesia and its biproduct of mining can be terraformed to the benefit of its local food security.
Indonesia and South Africa having similar climate conditions opens the project to experiment with its own mining biproduct landscape to be interrogated and deciphered to address its own viability. Methodology:
Using Post Imperial Russian Deconstructionism, such as Ivan Cherenkov – Russian Architect - as a way of unpacking the physical components of space by separating out elements
landscapes in Neo-Liberal South Africa. This site is acknowledged as space of a toxic landscape unfit for any roles due to its toxicity in nature.(Baczynska & Lorenc & Kazmierczak ; 2017) The idea of regrowth on this site is to explore a possible investigation and eventual intervention that may act as a precedent or stepping stone towards any future developments of similar sites across Gauteng’s specific climate
Questions to be investigated in this Major Design Project:
1.What role can memorialisation of the landscape play in food production?
2.How can current food production technologies be used to remediate a toxic landscape?
3.What processes are involved with the regeneration of a toxic landscape?
Food security is understood to be the access to a decided upon amount of nutritional value to meet a person’s minimum nutritional needs (K. Grepin;2021). However, this project begins to expand on this understanding of food security as a method of critical food supply not for capitalistic gain but for food security in the in-land context of Johannesburg. Utilizing the City Deep Mine’s Old Tailing Heap as a site of inquiry to host the experimentation of food production technologies and the eventual realisation of an intervention challenged with the restoration of a tailings site into a viable food source represented as a apologue.
As an apologue of the near future, the project adopts a theoretical approach investigating both the experimentation process as both a facilitator and an informant to understanding the role of architecture and technology in memory landscapes. The choosing of a mine tailing site is one of practical reconciliation of the landscape. Quentin Stevens and Karen Franck suggest in their publication: Memorials as spaces of engagement, design, use and meaning, that in the planning of new memorial sites across the globe
of erasure of elements that may over complicate the state of the project and its drawings. This will provide a new lens to peer into and interact with site of interest to possibly find new evidence that may not be apparent through regular architectural conventions. Cherenkov (10: 1929)
In addition using Dadaism as a method of challenging the conventions of architectural drawing the project enlists the usage of photomontage and collage as a way of accessing hidden layers set in the site that conventional drawings would disregard.
(Dada 2022) The usage of dada as a link to the fine art discipline benefits the project to create previously unexplored ideas of challenging what is essential architecture and vital technologies.