Abstract
There are no masculinities without culture: all masculinities are fixed to culture, place and time” explained Professor Kopano Ratele in his book liberating masculinities. Masculinity refers to a pattern of cultural practices by which men are defined in the society. Colonisation introduced boys boarding schools designed around the cultural practices of the colonisers, which resulted in the negation of the Xhosa cultural practises in the case of SACS high school. Architecture has been used as a social weapon to render culture static, maintaining its ideological position through its static nature that constantly inform human behaviour in space. At a scale 1:50 and 1:1 this project investigates cultural practices at SACS high school to establish masculinity cultures sustained by architecture. Transformation of boys into men should take into consideration the cultural changes that takes place in the society. This project proposes an architecture that changes its form to transform boys into men by reflecting different cultures of masculinities that boys will engage and identify with in different times and places. The work will engage with the potential grade 8 students through pamphlets using the Instagram platform. This project proposes at a scale 1:50 and 1:1 an architecture with movable frames that can be reconfigured to suite required spatial conditions at a particular time and place. An architecture that exposes masculinity and force it to negotiate its performances within space.
M.Tech. (Architecture)