Abstract
This thesis addresses the question: ‘can architecture be complicit?’ The research is structured as a progressively emerging body of work that has evolved through two distinct stages of research development. The notion of complicity in architecture is addressed through events related to apartheid human rights violations at John Vorster Police Station in Johannesburg, South Africa , and through a mutually supportive body of drawings which employing design and research-led methodologies. The work explores how design and architectural representation might be deployed to uncover important but often obscured themes surrounding torture and complicity in the built environment. The approach is seen as experimental, engaging with both conventional framing of philosophical ideas around both ethics and aesthetics and with questions around how active design production can contribute to new research trajectories and avenues of architectural production. The thesis aims to contribute to a growing body of knowledge that actively addresses space and the role of architecture in trauma, and has resulted in a substantiation to the claim that architecture can indeed be complicit. The work develops the question of complicity as an open research initiative and encourages further engagement.