Holistic health centre: Signal Hill, Bloemfontein

Abstract

This design dissertation investigates the causality that stems from a proverbial division in modern social, economic and contextual healthcare spaces in South Africa. The aim is toward addressing this division through the establishment and discourse of its respective ‘peripheries’. Particular relevance is appointed to the meaning of healthcare as a physical, social and economic space, through the analysis of scientific and philosophical research conducted with reference to classical and modern thinking, as well as looking at the phenomenological growth of primordial human beings and concurrent architecture. Through identifying how these concepts changed the fundamental aspects of healthcare, a question is posed toward the conceptualisation of a healing ‘place’ through a proposed design methodology. The document then seeks to consummate the abstract notion of a healing place and concrete healthcare ideologies, in an effort to propose the synthesis of a Holistic Health Centre in an integrated South African context derived from these ‘peripheries’.