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THE ACT OF SERVICE 2020 The work and focus of the University of Johannesburg’s Graduate School of Architecture Unit 19 and it is also used to describe facilities, ceremonies, Tuliza Sindi ( unit leader) and and rituals. The word’s root servise (old French) Muhammad Dawjee ( unit tutor) means “act of homage” (Hindley, Langley & Levy
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nit 19 examines the sociopolitical characteristics of service infrastructures and their historical and continued contributions to society-making. The definition of service infrastructures varies. State structures refer to them as systems such as municipalities and built infrastructures like highways and water supply systems. It defines the body WE INVESTIGATE THE (servitude, slavery), roles (civil servant of God), is used WAY SPACE CAN MIRROR servant, in some commercial industries as THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN a unit of measurement (service RENDERED DISPOSSESSED, ratings), and defines entire industries (service industry). INFRASTRUCTURAL AND NGOs and social enterprises WITHOUT REFLECTION. identify it as their “bottom line”, 1. Tree of Man. (Image by Dimpho Selepe).
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ARCHITECTURE SA
2000), which describes a public expression of faithfulness – social contract or public declaration of trust – toward one’s shared values. These human constructions of service are rooted in transaction, but what/who the giver is and what/ who the receiver is, is not always conspicuous. Even what is given and what is received can be ambiguous. It operates performatively, taking place primarily in conditions of public life from the scale of the individual to that of state systems. Unit 19 is interested in the Trojan-horse agreements made between states through the service-based relationalities that function as tools of permission, legitimation, structuration, and absolution for power structures. Three outputs (or ordering tactics) that both architecture and service have in common are of interest to the unit. 1. The categories they produce – how they differentiate public from private, solid from void, native from transgressor and believer from unbeliever.
J U N E / J U LY / A U G U S T
2021
