Throwaway Sandton:
Critiquing our desire to separate ourselves from the environmental degradation of the irrelevant architecture
This is a project about a fascination with ephemeral phenomena and our psychological responses to these. It’s a project about artifice and spectacle. It’s about placemaking, community-building, and mental health. It’s about theatre. Its about spatial politics of light and shadow.
The origins of the project lies in my observation and critique of the continuous rampant northward relocation and consequent dislocation of the city, a result of cheap peripheral land and developer rapacity. This repeated abandonment of established urban centres, points to a cultural ambivalence that I equate with a throwaway culture. Not only is this wasteful but it affects us on a deeply psychological level as we lose access to the original landscape and this is something that we all yearn for.
Fredman presents a tower in the landscape (modernist trope) but that it’s a poor substitute for what we’ve lost. Corporatised remaking of nature is unsatisfying and oversimplified. I’m looking for more complexity and synthesis in design.
Within this context, my focus is on translating landscape abstractions into Fredman Towers. Incorporating phenomenological interventions such as light, colour, projection, reflection, and refraction, I aspire to cultivate a work environment imbued with phenomenological significance, all while avoiding substantial structural changes.
