The - ghost - in - the - machine: extending the narrative of the Egoli Gas Works
Date
2012-08-17
Authors
Pather, Tarushin
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Abstract
Architecture seeks to preserve itself and is seen as a lasting reminder of memory. Yet in the age we live in, this idea of memory is being challenged by the use of information technology, which becomes obsolete and irrelevant much faster than the technologies of the past. The Egoli Gas site expresses the past industrialization of the city of Johannesburg. Whilst the Gauteng area itself has been positioned as the center of technological development of South Africa, this site exists as a ghost within the city that endlessly haunts the built environment. Can technology parks and places of advanced technological research and development, which were in fact built on the foundation of industrialization, then seek to re-inhabit the site of their ghostly predecessor? Can the old buildings that occupy the site, as machines of their era, be upgraded and a new layer be added to the story of the Gas Works?