Abstract
M.Tech. (Architecture)
The seemingly simple and everyday act of arrival at ones symbolically most secure space, the home, is fraught with anxiety. In South Africa entering your home is a charged experience that fundamentally, yet almost subconsciously shapes our relationship to home. The perceived and real danger that is present upon arrival has resulted in rituals of entry being highly curated to mitigate risk and ensure our safety. This includes a plethora of gates, burglar bars, key pads, CCTV, security guard, motion detectors and remote controls. Whilst these measures may provide some degree of safety they comprise a necessary and real architectural vocabulary of arrival.
This state of paranoia and anticipation is likened to the scenes of a horror movie. In cinematography, the director of a horror movie has a defined series of tactics that he or she will employ to curate the horror experience for the viewer. These include reflections and mirrors, use of negative space, turning the corner and fluctuating Mise-En-Scene (Shelton, 2018). Interestingly and of particular significance to this research, each of these experiences are inextricably linked to space. Cinematography in horror movies forms the basis of developing this spatial vocabulary in architecture which corresponds to specific viewer experiences.
Using the critical, representational and speculative capacity of architecture, this project will study and document the spatial and experiential make-up of thresholds that generate great anxiety in Johannesburg. The Arrival aims to expand the spatial literacy of a most frequent experience, yet so vulnerable and necessary. In so doing, it would provide a point for further speculation and interrogation. Set design and cinema will inform the exploration and representation of the work. Each Threshold Anxiety case study will be substantiated in a manner that takes its clues from techniques of documentation and choreography defined in set design and cinematography. A corresponding transcendence will be constructed through the design of cinematic sets that curate the act of subverting, overcoming or reacting to The Arrival.
Main themes and methods will be discussed over 6 chapters in conjunction with key drawings to tell the narrative of the years work and how the project evolved. The first chapter starts by discussing the initial findings of blind spots and threshold anxiety which structured the narrative of the years work. Different versions of this are then explored in scale and typology through documenting and mapping. The finding were then presented in a way that is true to the nature of the experience, in an anxiety evoking manner. The manipulating qualities of these security barriers are then related to the scare tactics used in horror films and used in documenting the arrival of a local in Melville, Johannesburg. I then make a critical statement on the existing and accepted manner of security through fantastical drawings. For the final output of this project three blueprints will be designed around typical Joburg Vernacular houses as an approach to security and presented in model form of sets designed around these sites.