“Unspoken City” is a project located within Unit 21’s chosen site of the Randjeslaagte Triangle in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. The project focuses on Hillbrow Market & Taxi Rank which is by its own right a melting pot of African Culture that links people. While acknowledging Hillbrow’s reputation for its diverse African cuisines, it is however also known for its hostile nature and the project seeks to reinvent the urban experience by creating innovative design strategies centred on food.
The main challenge addressed by “Unspoken City” is the perceived hostility of Hillbrow, which automatically discourages outsiders from exploring the city’s culinary offerings. Through the strategic use of food as a spatial tactic, the project aims to transform Hillbrow into a safe and welcoming environment for locals and outsiders. Hillbrow Market and Taxi Rank along Claim Street serves as pivotal site for this project. The project’s main objectives involve studying the social and cultural dynamics of dining times to investigate factors that contribute to a feeling of security in unfamiliar urban environments. Through a process of ‘hacking the dining room,’ the project aims to investigate how different food recipes and dining experiences can affect or influence social dynamics and feelings of safety in both urban and private environments.
This project reimagines the city’s fabric, addressing disorientation and lack of safety by using food as a medium which fosters familiarity, community, and safety. The project through this investigation proposes a hybrid dining table that evolves and adapts to different user personalities and needs of its community during different dining scenarios of different user groups and individuals. The propositional table is installed at the edge of the site, in front of the food serving shops along Goldreich Street. The hybrid dining table can be rotated and orientated in various directions to cater for the preferences of different users. Additionally, it can serve as a functional utility in different site conditions.
