Abstract
This year’s Unit15X theme- Memory in Public Spaces:
investigates a series of post-apartheid memorial places
in the urban context of Gauteng to record what has
been designed, how they function in the surrounding
communities and their durability as man-made objects
in space. The aim of Unit15X 2022 theme is to
explore context transformative design concepts and
design decisions through a methodology that raises
questions about the design, complexity, performance,
and contextual response and responsibility of sites of
memorialisation.
Memorial and places of memory are the physical
manifestations of the society-in-transform concept.
It seeks to heal from the trauma of past injustices
of Apartheid and its evil system segregation and
subjugation of black people. One of the aims of the
1995 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in
South Africa was to create sites that would memorialise
the struggle against Apartheid by the creation of
physical structures and spaces in the landscape,
both urban and rural, where people could gather to
remember, to grieve, commemorate and celebrate, as
a process of healing, finding closure and ways to move
forward in the multicultural society.
Unit15X will explore and emphasise questions of
complexity, performance, responsiveness, and diversity
of sites of memorials as a methodology that prevents
one from falling into the trap of understanding heritage
and memorialisation in ways that will produce a onesided
sense of heritage as cultural difference, race, and
bounded identity (Hlongwane and Ndlovu: 2019). Units
15X’s motivation for exploring physical sites of memorial
and restitution is driven by the notion that they are
perhaps the least appreciated and studied spaces and
areas of social justice (Light and Young: 2015).
In 2022 Unit 15X will study existing memorials,
buildings, monuments, and public spaces to upraise
various kinds of memorials that are in existence and will
challenge students to propose alternative/new memorial
designs dedicated to unknown and unacknowledged
individuals who contributed to the struggle against
apartheid, by having critical ‘dialogues’ with the past.
We envisage these kinds of ‘dialogues’ to happen in
three modes of exploration. Firstly, the students will
be engaged in ‘design dialogues’ through investigation
of memorials and design exploration; secondly, the
students’ investigations of existing memorials will be
exhibited in a public gallery; thirdly, the Unit leaders
and students will co-author papers for presentation
to journals or conferences. The aim is to raise critical
conversations in the public, academy, and indeed the
design discipline of.
Typically, research in the academic context is
understood to be an activity carried out through a
theoretical investigation or a design investigation
to reveal new knowledge about a phenomenon,
an artefact or a design. In our case research will
generally refer to a landscape that has been designed
or naturally made and how it interacts with humans.
How we engage with this research is referred to as
the method or methodology. In research, the method
ensures validity and integrity for a research process
by ensuring that other researchers are able to carry
out similar research in different contexts. Lucas (2016)
describes method as: ‘…a consciously and consistently
applied course of action for the sake of acquiring a
concrete target through the application of a specific set
of planned actions and means.’
Unit15X recognises there is a multiplicity of research
methods; this Unit emphasises the paradigm of
projective design where design processes can be seen
as generators of new knowledge. Projective design
in Units 15x focuses on the unique agency of the
design process to attain research outcomes by asking
the student to imagine responses to the question of:
“how might things be done differently?” (Deming and
Swaffield 2011, 36) in the landscape. In Unit15X, we
emphasise eight criteria to define the quality and to
guide the development of the research design. The
criteria include Truth value; Applicability; Consistency;
Transparency; Significance; Efficiency; Organisation,
and Originality. Unit 15X embraces an eclectic mix
of pedagogical approaches: collaborative learning,
engaged action research methodology, and Post
Occupancy Evaluation (POE).
The POE methodology challenges designers to be
critical about, amongst others, memorials by asking
critical questions: For whom were they designed?
What do they mean? How do they function socially
and culturally in their communities? What is their use?
How were they made, with what, and how have they
weathered and fared in durability and performance?
Have they transformed their context? If so, how? The
final outputs will be spatial projections in the landscape
and material articulation of what memorial sites/spaces
of the future could be.