Margarita Calero Architect
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NETWORK OF LIMITS. URBAN FUTURE SOUTH AFRICA

DESCRIPTION

Can South Africans improve their economy by creating an infrastructure on the capitalist network of shopping centers?

After having researched the city of Johannesburg in terms of Banking, Trade and Cellphone connectivity, we investigated the influence that the creation of malls has had on the social-public behavior after Apartheid. Given the fact that the Malls in Johannesburg are places where people usually socialize, our main questions were: What is public space in the XXI century in Johannesburg?

Can commercial space become a space for political action? This proposal aims to build a social movement that reacts against the current role of the mall. The idea is to break the limits between the private and public sphere (like the fence between the Mall and the city), in order to build an attractor and rebuild the public sphere.

The main site in the Maboneng Precinct will become the headquarters of this social movement that will distribute ‘temporal and easily assembled construction kits’ to build the limit of the Mall. It will provide space for organization and discussion which will be a public space for the city that deals with the limit between the site and the street. The objective of this social movement is to claim the expansion for local businesses through the creation of ‘Stokvels’ (collaborative banking) and through a media platform.

The project is based on a flexible layered system of surfaces that materializes the temporal changes of the program through the tension between them. The concept is based on the capacity of those surfaces to dialogue between two spaces and to generate a new programmatic boundary.

  • This Project was selected for archiving and published in the book ABSTRACT 2012/2013, Annual GSAPP Columbia Publication.
  • EXHIBITED at Studio-X Johannesburg 2012.

DETAILS

LOCATION: Johannesburg, South Africa

YEAR: 2012

SIZE: –

PROGRAM: Urban Design, Market, Workshops, Political Act, Factory

TEAM

Diana Cristóbal Olave [MABEL O. WILSON DESIGN STUDIO]

TALKING ABOUT THIS PROJECT