Abstract
“Instead of mere vision, or the five classical senses, architecture involves several realms of sensory
experience which interact and fuse into each other”. (Pallasmaa, p. 45, 2012).
Keywords: Phenomenology, senses, multi-sensory, experience, memory
The research topic
This project proposes to investigate African ways of memorialising using the site of Lobatse, Peleng,
in Botswana, to test out ways of memorialisation using all of the human senses. How can using only
sense contribute to the memorialisation of history? What is of value in memory of African spaces?
What is appropriate in our African context?
The site Peleng in Lobatse, Botswana, is essential to preserve the memories of the struggle against
apartheid. Upon visiting the sites, one notices that the sites are disjoined, unrecognisable, and unexperienced
by the everyday. It needs to be better connected to tell the whole story for the visitors to
experience it fully.
Botswana played a vital role in the liberation struggle to guard safe passage to the liberation leaders
during apartheid during exile. The Fish Keitseng Monument, within Lobatse, played an important role
in establishing an underground system for the ANC(African National Congress). Fish Keitseng joined
the ANC in 1948. His house became a National Monument in 2012. (www.sahistory.org.za, 2011)
The theoretical approach comes from using Peter Zumthor’s three theories when he looks at the experience
of spaces(ArchAnime, 2019): the first would be to enhance what is valuable, secondly to correct
what is disturbing, and thirdly, to create what is missing. From this, I developed three research questions
related to my site; How can the space be enhanced through the senses to become more memorable?
What about the space is disturbing and needs to be altered? What experience can be created that
is missing in the current space?
The questions will be explored through the ethnographic approach and will be explored in a designed
manner to propose new spaces using the theory of Zumthor and the culture that I absorbed and observed
in Botswana. In taking that theory of how the people of Lobatse interact with the landscape
and environment and bring a new understanding of this historical, cultural space.
I will be working in the precinct of Lobatse, more specifically, the surrounding area of the Fish Keitseng
Monument and the hike that leads up the hill. This will be achieved using the concept of the Kgotla,
which will inform each site’s design, and this will be the connection that will be created between all of
them. “The Kgotla (meeting place for the tribe)”, has many uses, from resolving conflict “as the court
or arbitration space” within the community to “socialisation and cultural activities”. (MOUMAKWA,
p. iii, 2010) A typical Setswana village “radiates around the Chief’s kgotla” (Mosidi, p.133, 2019). The
experience of the senses within the Kgotla will be explored. The Kgotla is a space movement, and “spatiality
of architecture is only revealed in movement.” (Voigt & Roy, p. 117, 2021)
Memories are relived through sensual experiences in different environments that include: the current
context of Lobatse, the historical that starts at the Fish Keitseng Monument and the future that was
imagined by the freedom fighters, the trail, which ends on top of the hill adjacent to the community
of Lobatse. The past, present and future experiences on the different sites come together, giving the
tourist a holistic experience of the struggle and culture of Botswana.
This project will also look at haptic senses as a basis for other sensory engagements (auditory, ocular,
olfactory and gustatory) in space. Haptic senses relate to modes of touching and tactility in experiencing
space through touch. The initial act of a specific haptic movement triggers the space to activate the
use of another sense to experience the space in a specific manner. The reading ‘Sensory Intensification’
talks about the types of deprivations that are absent in our lives and the cities surrounding us—namely,
sensory deprivation, kinesthetic deprivation and haptic deprivation. Ashley Montagu considers the
haptic sense the ‘mother of the senses’. I plan to explore how these deprivations (sensory, kinesthetic,
and haptic) can be turned into intensifications for the user’s experience.
Theoretical underpinning
The theoretical underpinning of my project is based on phenomenology. This will be achieved by looking
at sensory intensification, sensory enhancement and sensory engagement of space. I define phenomenology
as a bodily experience that incorporates all the senses, ultimately leading to a transcended
experience of the human body, how the experience of the subject and object in architecture can go
beyond just physical to the transcendental. These are the possible ‘futures’ that I want to explore in
experiencing Architecture through the senses in memorial design, how we experience space through
our senses from a personal perspective. The theorists on phenomenology that I am using are “Juhani
ABSTRACT
Subtitle: Linking the disconnected spaces of Lobatse precinct through muti-sensory experiences using the concept of
TITLE: MEMORIALIZING THE PILGRIMAGE TO FREEDOM THROUGH SENSORY EXPERIENCES
Pallasmaa”, “Christian Norberg-Schulz”, “Edmund Husserl”, “Martin Heidegger”, and “Maurice Merleau-Ponty”.
(Smith, p. 22, 2003), (Bedford, p. 181, 2018)
“Basically, phenomenology studies the structure of various types of experience ranging from perception,
thought, memory, imagination, emotion, desire, and volition to bodily awareness, embodied action, and
social activity, including linguistic activity.” (smith, p. 3, 2003) My focus will be perception, memory, imagination,
emotion, bodily awareness, embodied action and social activity.
Methodology
The TESS(Toolkit for the ethnographic study of space) will be used as the ethnographic approach in observing
and unpacking the site of Lobatse. The trail from the Fish Keitseng Monument to Peleng Hill will be hiked and
documented through film and photographs. This will be used to unpack further the essential site elements and
spaces on this route.
The methodology follows Catherine Dee’s Critical Visual Studies in Landscape Architecture (2004). I plan on
using ‘art as inquiry’, ‘mappings’, and composite drawings as my visual form of exploration. With ‘Art as inquiry’,
I will use Suprematism and deconstructivism to question and explore my project artistically. ‘The term
Suprematism refers to an abstract based art based upon “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling” rather than on
visual depiction of objects (Wikipedia Contributors, 2019). This is a relevant approach to my theory of sensory
experience as it points out the shift from only visual focus to feel. The three-dimensional aspect of space will be
essential for unpacking my topic. This will be explored using physical and digital models.
The types of experimentation for the senses will include how the specific materials in a Kgotla space (traditional
materials of Botswana) can be used to cater for different sensory experiences, how the attributes of the
senses and combinations thereof can evoke emotions that link to the purpose of each intervention point on the
route up the hill.