Abstract
M.Tech. (Architecture)
The private home is would to most epitomize an offering of a sacred space to protect and
nourish individual and collective well-being and growth. In South Africa, the omnipresent
threat and reality of violent intrusion has fundamentally altered the relationship we have
with our homes. In protecting ourselves from external harmful forces, we have consequently
transformed our homes into forts. These forts, while mitigating danger, dramatically shape
our experiences towards paranoia, constraint and isolation. Paradoxically our gates, doors
and walls exacerbate our vulnerability due to the complex means of escape should the need
arise.
Fear and crime have come to shape our domestic experiences in ways that defy comprehension.
This work aims to deepen the understanding of defensive domestic tactic and architectures
through the study of houses in vulnerable neighborhoods’ that have undergone extreme modes
of fortification. The documentation of these tactics will be recorded in a manual that
will guide a speculation. The drawings will be translations derived from the perspective
of both occupant and perpetrator to demonstrate how similar architectures hold different
uses and value
The project aims to develop more radical representations of our relationship to safety.
It will draw attention to the architecture that we produce consciously and subconsciously
and challenge more thoughtful design of spaces that support our safety and well-being.
Through understanding all the analysis I have done using the methods of identification,
deep observation, prediction (exaggeration), and reaction / rebuttal of this trajectory,
I will be inserting a Trojan horse into this mindless perpetuation of paranoia security
apparatus which will in turn offer to dismantle or disarm it. The idea is to reconcile or
claim back a level of social life in something that is perpetually ruined because of the
way we inhabit our architecture. Architecture has a role to be more productive in this
‘set-up’, through innovative spatial adjustments so that we don’t have to go through this
route of fortification and social isolation. The idea is to redefine what a domestic fort
really is by reprogramming the existing to not need security eventually. This will be
explored using themes drawn out from my project to communicate a new design, looking at
the incremental deconstruction of the existing scenario by placing something else in its
place in an incremental way at a small scale that increases to over time from a domestic
to suburban scale.