F E AT U R E
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS JOURNAL:
City of Sweet Waters:
Re-introducing the city of Cape Town’s ancient water system by revealing spatial memory
Nabeelah Kader Hashim
Introduction The City of Cape Town was once known as the Place of Sweet Waters, or ‘Camissa’ by the indigenous Khoena tribes. These ‘sweet waters’ refer to the 36 flourishing springs and four rivers that once ran unimpeded through pre-colonial Cape Town. This thesis draws on the range of relationships that were established between people and Cape Towns’ freshwater systems at various points in its history. It was due to the openly accessible freshwater resources and fertile land that Cape Town was colonised by the Dutch East India Company in 1652. This permanent settlement developed a system of vegetable gardens and was also known for the trading of slaves. The Goringhaicona, an indigenous community that broke away from tribal life, established a trading bay at the port of Table Bay. The Goringhaicona would collect water from the upper reaches of the Camissa River (Platteklip River) and bring it to the shore or the Europeans and slaves who arrived at
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the port. This design project is inspired by these interactions with water that brought diverse people together. This aims to reintegrate the hydrological system of indigenous streams by revealing them and the slave history that has been hidden with it. The re-imagining of this hydrological system ties into the need to memorialise untold history that is visually missing in the city we see today. This thesis explores ‘slowness’ as a design strategy and its link of memory and space. The site of intervention is Riebeeck Square at the intersection of Longmarket Street and Buitengracht Street, Cape Town – one connecting to the memory of slavery and the other revealing the hidden Camissa. A buried history The entry point into this thesis came from an interest in Cape Town’s ancient water system and how it evolved from the open water course that once ran freely from mountain to sea, to
being channelled into canals and then into the underground tunnels as they exist today. Through the process of understanding the history of this water system another layer of history revealed itself – the history of slavery in Cape Town and its missing visual memorialisation in the public spaces of the city. The implementation of slowness was the design strategy applied to reveal this history. This design strategy would engage the user by introducing a meaningful experience through visual interactions with slave history and the ancient water into the city’s public spaces. Slowness, memory and space – A design approach Slowness as a design strategy fosters spaces that evoke awareness, meaningful experiences, and a sense of accountability for daily actions. Implementing this design strategy required an understanding of the morphology of this water system and superimposing it with significant slave history sites. The locations where these
