Most of the public space is specifically intended to become a platform with infrastructure that is flexible that encourages adaptation and alteration. A series of walls and storerooms, covered with steel pergolas and grids, are placed within the public spaces and is intended to become the base structures for userbased programs where it could be enveloped, covered, dangled from or informed by.
THE GRID AS INFORMAL TRADE
SHED
This type of intervention could be erected in the morning and removed later with a possible table erected between the post using the structure provided
THE GRID AS GATHERING SPOT
Benches could be erected between the posts using the structure provided for family gatherings or weddings using the communal facilitied to prepare food
THE GRID AS SHOP
The structure could be used to erect more formal structures against the built walls where services is provided in the posts
THE GRID AS PLAYGROUD
Play equipment could be suspended of the structure by the users combining a large sphere of programs in the space
PORTFOLIO
SNETHEMBA JIYANE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROJECT
DISCRIPTION
• This was a first year project to showcase 2022 3-6 revit skills by drawing an existing house.
Gwathmey Residence - by Charles Gwathmey
The Versatile House
• Second year project where we were asked 2023 7-11 to design a student apartment.
The Underground Museum
• Last second year project, where we were 2023 12-15 tasked to to design a museum at Vilakazi street in Soweto we were given a site there.
Malboro/ Alexandra Township
Development - C40 Competition
• This was a very difficult project where we 2024 16-25 were tasked to develop an entire site even designing the landscape, houses, school etc.
Eyethu Community Cinema
• Eyethu cinema is my last year project where 2024 26-41 we were taked to design an cinema with outdoor areas for the community
ANNETE ROAD
MARLBORO
1 Identifiable centre and edge of neighbourhood “absorbent surfaces”
2 Walkable size [ 20-200 acres/16-81 ha 1/4 radius 400m from centre edge]
3 Mix of land uses & housing typologies
4 Integrated network of walkable streets
5 Special sites for civic purpose
400m
- An emphatic argument for sustainability through mixed use development
- Fluid design that gives back to the community and empowers it - Biophilic architecture where human being interact with nature in to strengthen the human interdependence with natural systems
Mr Martin Phakathi & his car wash
Ntate Lesitsi Matheta and his stall
Jukskei river
Pedestrian /cyclist bridge children’s playgroun d
COMBINING ECOLOGY RESTORATION WITH THE INTRODUCTION OF NEW INFRASTRUCTURE TO CREATE PUBLIC SPACES
SITE LOCATION
The Eyethu Cinema site is located on the Southern tip of Mofolo Central.
Machaba drive as main artery. Zulu drive as border between land uses connecting Mofolo to Elias Motsoaledi Road – a main road connecting multiple suburbs of Soweto. Kenini Street linking Machaba and Zulu Road
CONTEXT STUDY 01:
Formal and informal trade is found along Machaba Road, the same for the intersection of Kinini and Machaba. Eyethu Lifystyle center along with directly adjacent buildings, a block of retail buildings if found
This is one of the few instances where the building seems to have been intentionally built for commerce. Unfortunately, to the west this block is empty or used as vehicle scrap metal storage. This could be a result of the underused street scape of Kinini and Ishabalala Streets.
However along Machaba Drive, where ever there is a solid wall facing the road, informal trade is set up and the formalised commerce is reflected where some homes around the intersection are adapting to become mixed retail and domestic. Thus taking advantage of the script of the main road activity and responding with an appropriate set.
Figure 25
Formal & Informal Trade along Machaba Dr. Snethemba, 2024; Kabini, 2024)
CONTEXT STUDY 0
2:
The residential buildings to the west of the site along Maleyu Street is still mostly used as the intended domestic program.
This could be because of Maleyu Street being a quiet domestic road with the empty field not having any programmatic response to it.
They use the empty field as park space and some larger gathering spills over to that side.
Figure 29 Residential buildings along Maleyu Street Snethemba, 2024; Kabini, 2024)
URBAN INTERVENTION CASE STUDY
BERNARD TSCHUMI
PARC DE LA VILLETTE
Paris-1983
Originated in a competition to design then the biggest park in Paris. Tschumi used the principle of superimposition of a typical urban grid on the natural landscape - “almost a perverse reiteration of the urban life” He used the nodes created through this conjunction as ‘follies’ that a visitor could stumble upon to reorient themselves in the larger unfamiliar context. (Souza, 2011)
Similar to Tschumi, I aim to rid the foreign unused emptiness of the site by introducing a scale and grain that is familiar to the intended users.
Thus learning from the theoretical understanding of the conjunction of the known and the unknown as a guide to use superimposing as a method of space planning.
Further, his planning created grid intersection that emphasis nodes where he had planned or unplanned programs that could be discovered by the user. This could in a way encourage a drifting through the park that encourage exploration. The attempted use of my intervention will aim to do this as well.
ARCHITECTURAL CASE STUDY
DANIEL BUREN
Les 2 Plateaux - Project d’amenagement de la Cour du Palais Royal
Paris-1986
A courtyard intervention in the Historic Palais Royal in Paris. The Buren aimed to include the architectural composition of the palace, which is essentially linear, repetitive and gridded. The intervention emerges from the conjunction of these two principles, which is to say from all the possibilities of both of them, but nevertheless without them contradicting one another or cancelling each other out.
(Labedade, n.d.)
Buren managed to, on theoretical level, implement two contrasting programs on the space with playing to the strenghts of both. This precedent could aid my intervention in understanding the conjunction of the planned nature of architecture and the unplanned idealogy of the intended space.
Spacially, Buren used a conjunction of the strict grid and altering the levels of the floorscape to create the threshold between different uses. Thus using mutliple dimensions to create space.
Buren used the altering levels to allow ‘the human to be the scalpture’ to observe or to be observed. This principle is at the core of the conceptual aim of my intervention to expose narrative.
Figure 35
Conjunction by Tschumi
(Souza, 2011)
Figure 37 a movement study by Buren (Labedade, n.d.)
Figure 36
Spacial study by Buren (Labedade, n.d.)
MAPPING SOCIAL AND BUSINESS NODES ALONG MACHABA DRIVE
What we notice is that although there are many small scale businesses around the site, the more prominent and large scale business are situated on Machaba drive.
The reasoning behind that could be that Machaba drive connects Eyethu Cinema to the train station and taxi route which makes the road a main road when it comes to transport access.
Due to this, the road becomes a place where most businesses are situated because it is highly frequented. Due to the fact that businesses are run from their private homes, the ones that are situated on Machaba drive benefit most from this influx of people in the peak times of the day, i.e. morning, evening.
Majority of the business spaces are merged with social spaces, creating a space that has many layers.
SITE CONTEXT
MOVEMENT
The empty field around Eyethu is in contrast to otherwised well defined Machaba Drive. This model show the effect this has on the movement of pedestrians when passing the site.
EMPTY FIELD & CAR WASH/FILLING STATION (ABANDONED)
SCALE
The Eyethy Cinema scale is alien to the context of the larger Mofolo community. The intervention seak to soften this contrast by responding to the building scale of the surrounding buildings.
SITE SECTION
The abandoned cinema buidling is surrounded by empty field and neighboured by mostly domestic scale buildings.
The building is of a much larger scale than that of the adjacent buildings.
A temporary tent structure to the North of the site is used as a church and a filling station is left abandoned to the south.
EYETHU CINEMA
EYETHU LIFESTYLE CENTER
EMPTY FIELD & TENT CHURCH
Figure 32
Movement study model (Snethemba 2024)
Figure 33
Scale inverstigation model (Snethemba, 2024
DESIGN CONCEPT
Create public space where architecture creates a framework and a platform that will celebrate and encourage the organic adaptation and use of ‘space’ through a combination of planned and unplanned space designation to allow for:
//Uses to be defined by the user
//Adaptable physical form as a result of different programmatic needs
//Different types of gathering in differentiating nodes
//Resulting in exposing the rudimentary of the individual expression, transferred through observation and the gathering of people.
INITIAL APPROACH
- The overlay of the organic township development is overlaid onto the site
- The left over space (in red) allocated to movement and gathering nodes where the white spaces is allocated to different interventions
- Thus alllocating spaces with differentiation in size and location to either planned built interverntions or set out for user built interventions
- For the planned spaces, identify four types of public programs
These spaces are:
1_ Gallery Space
2_ Performance Terrace
3_A series of more intimate spaces to be changeable by the development of paviliions and trading spaces
4_Trading with street observation
INITIAL APPROACH
GALLERY
Facing the main square fronting the Eyethu Cinema Hall. Recessed below the square floor level and protruding below and between the movement patheways. This create courtyard spaces visualy accessable from the pathways be require drifting and discovery to directly interact with.
PERFORMANCE TERRACE
An open space with planted teracced steps allow for both planne performances or gathererings but also for a safe park. The terraces and central location of the staging area while being enveloped by buildings are intended to be comfortable to sit and observe the surrounding activities.
NODE
The areas identified as ‘nodes’ are spaces created between the other interventions on the site. The closeness and intimacy of each node differs and each will thus cater for a different level or form of expression.
TRADING
Situated on the edge of the precint along all major movement routes, a combination of formal and informal trade spaces. The layout and design of these spaces to be designed to encourage interaction with the precinct through visual and physical connections.
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
After the initial approach the design developed in four destinct steps:
AUse the overlay site plan and:
- Exploring the site layout by restricting the spaces to lines or grids connecting the site to existing urban context
- Analysed the site programs to better enhance that of the existing context and uses
- Further explore the scale of the new to the existing
B
-Analyse the open spaces formed in the organic overlay
-Explore how these space could be defined in an urban famework
-Define what areas should be planned and what areas to be left for user defined interventions
C- Using the hierarchy of movement as a driver to establish and difine the hierarchy on the site
- Explore the site building mass - what should be permanent and what should be temporaty
- How architecture can enhance or encourage the temporary
D- Exploring how architecture can enhance or encourage the temporary or unplanned
- Designated larger open spaces for market space as well as different types of gathering
- Use a series of walls, benches etc to be the ‘foundation’ of possible temporary or permant structures to be built be the user
- A clearer definition between the more open and built up
FINAL LAYOUT
PUBLIC SPACE PROGRAMS
The left-over space should cater for the unplanned, user orientated activity. To achieve this, four programs were identified as possible catalysts for the every-day narratives of the users to be portrayed. These programs act as destination points and will establish movement and activity throughout the site.
The planned areas for the programs are identified on the layout and sections. These areas, as part of an urban framework, are studied and explained through axonometric diagrams, identifying the prominent and characteristic aspects of these spaces through design principles.
In a conceptual eye-level perspective, a combination of sketch and pixelated photographic cut-outs to expand on the planned and unplanned conceptual nature of the spaces.
01_OBSERVATION SPACES
02_GATHERING SPACES
03_EXHIBITION SPACES
04_INFORMAL
TRADE & LESS FORMALISED TRADE
01
OBSERVATION
Situated on the edge of the precint along all major movement routes, a combination of formal and informal trade spaces. The layout and design of these spaces to be designed to encourage interaction with the precinct through visual and physical connections.
02
GATHERING
An open space with planted teracced steps allow for both planne performances or gathererings but also for a safe park. The terraces and central location of the staging area while being enveloped by buildings are intended to be comfortable to sit and observe the surrounding activities.
03
EXHIBITION
Facing the main square fronting the Eyethu Cinema Hall. Recessed below the square floor level and protruding below and between the movement patheways. This create courtyard spaces visualy accessable from the pathways be require drifting and discovery to directly interact with.
04
TRADE
The uplanned area of the public space will allow for multiple user defined programs, especially expanding on the informal trade of Machaba Drive. The closeness and intimacy of each use differs and each will thus cater for a different level or form of expression.
THE GRID STRUCTURE
Steel Structure with post and beams with infill slats all with a range of hooks to allow for and encourage different user defined infill structures to be erected. See possible uses in dairag below
MOVEMEN & THRESHOLD
A differentiation in the slat density define where primary movement arteries. A series of walls create a threshold between the open spaces and the movement spaces. These walls help to create hierarchy and rythm along the movement an with limiting the view into the open space, create curiosity for the person walking along.
STORAGE & ACTIVATION
A series of storage units attempts to activate trade in the open space. Pivor doors could be locked at night and double as hanging space for trade during the day. The steel grid could act as support for further expension if required by the user.
PLAN FOR THE UNPLANNED
The intervention can be dissected into five fundamental typologies of infrastructure that encourages a user-orientated program to develop in and around these frameworks.
COMMUNAL SERVICES
Located centrally, basic services are combined including basins and washup areas used by all informal traders in the public space. These are centrally located to create a sence of community and to open up the rest of the space for organic infill.
SPILL-OUT
The steel grid overhead to dissipate leaving the post remaining. The post then change in height and width to become the base for a different type of installation or pavilion the be built be the user. The undulating floor create seating and play areas for observation and performance.
UNPLANNED USER ORIENTATED INFILL:
Most of the public space is specifically intended to become a platform with infrastructure that is flexible that encourages adaptation and alteration. A series of walls and storerooms, covered with steel pergolas and grids, are placed within the public spaces and is intended to become the base structures for userbased programs where it could be enveloped, covered, dangled from or informed by.
THE GRID AS INFORMAL TRADE SHED
This type of intervention could be erected in the morning and removed later with a possible table erected between the post using the structure provided
THE GRID AS GATHERING SPOT
Benches could be erected between the posts using the structure provided for family gatherings or weddings using the communal facilitied to prepare food
THE GRID AS SHOP
The structure could be used to erect more formal structures against the built walls where services is provided in the posts
THE GRID AS PLAYGROUD
Play equipment could be suspended of the structure by the users combining a large sphere of programs in the space
