South Africa: Designs should reflect Jo'burg's diversity

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Designs should reflect Jo'burg's diversity
November 27, 2005

By Lindsey Bremner, Sunday Culture

One of the central tenets of Fanuel Motsepe's design for the Gauteng government precinct is that overlaying Johannesburg's modernist city grid with "tribal space-making" devices and motifs is a legitimate and valid political act that will contribute to dismantling apartheid's "spatial imbalances". Furthermore, he counters criticism by challenging his critics on the basis that as white, middle-class architects, they have no embodied experience of his tribal culture (Tswana) and have therefore nothing to contribute to his argument.

It is these two propositions - first the meaning of the political act of tribalising urban space, and second, the basis upon which criticism can be voiced - that I wish to interrogate. (...)

continue reading: http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=1083&fArticleId=3011635

find more: Jo'burg does not accommodate African cultural essences, November 27, 2005, By Fanuel Motsepe - http://www.sundayindependent.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=1083&fArticleId=3011642