An experience of articulated thresholds in architecture: a resource centre for District Six’s Street People Community

Abstract

This dissertation proposes the design of a multi-functional facility catering to the needs of Cape Town CBD’s street people community. The project is sited on the periphery of the CBD, at its interface with District Six. District Six is an area that was historically subjected to the Group Areas Act (Act no. 41 of 1950)1 implemented by the apartheid government, upon its declaration as a “Whites Only Area” on February 2, 1966. Approximately sixty thousand black/coloured residents were forcibly removed from District Six and displaced to far-flung areas of the Cape Flats with many residents rendered vulnerable and harbouring hopes of returning to a place they once called home. The urban fabric of a community that once was, has since been left fragmented and disregarded with only remnants of the past still visible today. Both the site as it stands today and its past occupants are rendered fragile, in the same way as the unrecognised street people currently dwelling on the site on the periphery of District Six are vulnerable to the powers of other to act over them. Following the ruin of most of the structures and the community that previously inhabited them, the proposed site is itself also found in a state of disrepair and disregard. The “healing” and redress process has further been hampered by an inefficient and ineffective process of land restitution, and Government’s mismanagement of reclamation. 1 The Group Areas Act was first introduced in April 1950 and became Law on the 12th of July of that same year. It was then updated on an annual basis. (sahistory.org.za) Because of the proposed site’s proximity to day-labour and cap-in-hand opportunities, as well as NGOs dealing with homelessness, the city’s most vulnerable inhabitants, the homeless street people, have come to call the site their home. This design dissertation proposes a facility for the homeless that includes various private, semi-private, semi-public and public functions and accommodates institutional, commercial and residential elements. These diverse functions and elements are structured around street, passageway, plaza and courtyard typologies. The architectural proposal aims to sensitively accommodate the street people community at various stages of reintegration into the greater community. It further includes a primary rehabilitation centre for addicts living on the streets, a training facility to provide vocational training to the residents, a feeding kitchen and dining facility, as well as offices for the various NGOs under the banner of “The Street People’s Forum” dealing with the street people community of Cape Town’s CBD.