Studio Description

“This studio engages with the earth with the grounds beneath our feet, with the grounds that our architecture engages on, interfaces with, turns away from, is rooted in, shores itself up against, retains, rejects, cores and excavates. Sited in Johannesburg, South Africa, this studio takes the geological, elemental and mineralic (diamonds, gold, platinum…) histories of Johannesburg’s “Elusive Metropolis”as a 1 provocation to thoughtfully and curiously explore (through mapping, technical and narrative representation) the spatial implications of an extractive terrain through drawing as a medium of conceptual and critical inquiry. Studio themes will include (but are not limited to): questions of the ground, of site, of labour, of how we look (on, through plan and at, through section), of representing and representation, of superfluity, of excess and paucity, of moving above, below, on and through the grounds, of particles and sediments, of resource justices, extraction and resource capitalism, of a re-claiming of the earth as a restitutive, and reconciliatory act. Projects will be situated in the geologic, as well as in the socio-cultural, and fraught, history of this post-apartheid city.”

Framework

Author and professor at University of the Witwatersrand Achille Mbembe speaks about a mania for wealth and value of appearances that displaces tradition with “a culture of indifference and restlessness.” These forces reinforce a culture of artifice, superficiality, and faked objects and images. Within what Mbembe calls superfluity, things become meaningless.

The shaping of Johannesburg’s physical landscape was shaped by the realities below its surface and its deep-time geological processes. The boundary between these two worlds became altered, seeping and overlapping over each other through mining. Matthew Gibb describes re-trenched miners with only their skills, vision, ingenuity, and local resources setting up a robust (although illegal) networked economy in the form of artisanal mining. Such networks have supported brick-making endeavours for formal sector markets.

Jason Larkin speaks of the mine dumps, as “ugly” on appearance, but are “somehow beautiful…. They are decidedly Johannesburg.” The fine dust constituting these dumps and tailings are both toxic and radioactive. Rising acid mine water, a result of the displacement of the below ground, are also toxic. Yet, these places have become space for seeking peace, to carry out rituals, to pray.

This project takes a critical stance against superfluity, contextualized within questions of urbanity and landscape. To understand urbanity, and more specifically the “black urban”, Nqobile Malaza reframes how we understand the modern urban so as to establish a more congruous link between identity and space. In his research, different modes of living and being emerged, where one lives and works within a colonial realm while sustaining their identity in a post-colonial realm by regarding their townships “home”.

This project considers a need for spaces where people, as Dell Upton describes, can size and hold it - to either resist or fight back, while engaging in self learning. Between our contact with the world and our own cultural formation, as well as our ability to act on habit with room for improvisation, a multi-directional influence between space and individual can emerge.

There is no declarative statement about what these spaces ought to be, but is speculative as a way to frame the question. Against the backdrop of superfluity, their formations must begin to resemble deep-time processes that occur beneath us. A relationship between the below and above are explicitly entrenched, where the dust from mine tailings are slowly moved back into the earth, where the darkness transforms the material into brick as it reemerges, slowly reconstituting the dumps into space and (a)rchitecture defined by the people, for the people. The machine straddling the two worlds decontaminate and extract heavy metals which are already being re-mined, providing re-trenched miners to engage with local economies. Neutralization of toxicity is proposed through bioremediation with grasses that can neutralize metals through processes such as phytofiltration. Through the near reconstitution of the dumps, it is aimed that continual appropriation of the spaces it produces as places of reflection and worship, may continue as a force against superfluity.

The relationship between the worlds is experientially emphasized by Helmholtz resonators connected to fractures in the earth as a result of mining activities, which become filled with rising or receding water. The emitted cacophonous drones of these resonators indicate water levels and potential issues with acid water seepage. They are channels through which the earth can speak, to remember, to cry, and mourn – to enrich ones meditation and reflection, and to re-ground ones psyche if it seeks rest from the restless, and reclaim meaning from indifference.

Process