Abstract
M.Tech. (Architecture)
Our public-facing and Civic institutions such as Post Offices, Revenue Services and Home
Affairs Departments are vital parts of a nation’s democracy at service, it serves as a key
contact point between the state and its citizenry and is therefore required to provide the
fundamental services as part of its Democratic obligation. In reality, this is seldom the case,
as access to these institutions are symbolically and physically contorted. Grand, incremental
and micro assemblages of doors, guards, gates, CCTV, sign-in forms, lobbies and passages
create a formidable entry threshold. This practice is in stark contrast to the roles public-facing
institutions are obliged to perform, resulting in public-facing institutions that are forts in
themselves with the threshold assuming a powerful mediating role between institutions of
power and its citizenry.
In practical and architectural terms, the doors, gates and entry rituals assume great
significance as they are the physical attributes that define the journey of a citizen through the
thresholds that separate public space and function. Historically the origin of Lobby is derived
from medieval Latin lobia, laubia; covered way, and is more recently defined as “an entrance
hall, corridor, or vestibule, as in a public building often serving as an anteroom; foyer.” As the
entrance to a public institution, the lobby is a crucial point of interaction and should serve
as a mediating space that allows for the public and civic to come together in neutral terms.
However, the Lobby to the Civic function has become so physically contorted by the adoption
of privatized security elements, that it is no longer perceived as public. Quite similarly to the
Civic, the Corporate private lobby spaces have adopted characteristics from the Civic, in the
attempts to create gestures of ‘public space’ and pedestrian access, which are based around
the archetypal views of the Lobby as an Aesthetic that promotes the face of the Corporate
program. But like the civic, the corporate lobby has too become contorted as it is no longer
the Aesthetic Archetypal lobby space that is used for this function, but rather the elevator
lobby situated somewhere within the parking basement levels, that bypasses the Archetypal
Lobby space and leads directly to the corporate function.
As a developing country South Africa is in constant transition. Its cities and suburbs
continuously grow and change, and in its history of Colonization, Apartheid and postapartheid
democracy its seen quite drastic changes and growth, however it is evident that the...