Altered States: a youth centre & safe house for at-risk adolescents in Westbury, Johannesburg
Date
2016
Authors
Kridiotis,Joanne Alexandra
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Abstract
Drug abuse, particularly among younger generations, is
an issue of increasing concern in South Africa. According
to recent reports on global substance abuse, South
Africa was named as having some of the highest rates
of youth drug use in the world. This not only has dire impacts
for local communities and their youth, but has led
to increasing crime rates and unemployment in these
communities. One such community, plagued with youth
drug abuse and addiction, is Westbury, a former coloured
township in Western Johannesburg. Westbury has, in
turn, been selected as the focus area for this thesis due
to prevailing struggles with youth drug addiction, high
rates of drug-related crime and a community outcry
for a solution. This thesis aims to investigate a means
of alleviating degrees of drug use, and other risky youth
behaviours, by introducing an architectural intervention.
This intervention – defined as a Youth Centre and Safe
House – will attempt to address the search for identity
and meaning within the liminal state of adolescence,
and the often risky behaviours that arise as a result, by
providing a sense of ‘place’ and belonging for the ailing
youth.
With the main focus group being at-risk adolescents,
and in order to create an architecture that speaks of the
liminal state of adolescence, threshold and ‘the space
between’ become important design concepts. This
thesis attempts to investigate the movement between
distinct spaces, the experience of transition, and the
physical and psychological effects thereof. The resultant
design proposes an architecture of liminality, where
soft, implied thresholds and a celebration of ‘the space
between’ become the manner in which the liminal subject
can negotiate the built environment and establish a
sense of ‘place’ within it.
Description
Thesis (M.Arch. (Professional))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, 2016.
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Citation
Kridiotis, Joanne Alexandra (2016) Altered States: a youth centre & safe house for at-risk adolescents in Westbury, Johannesburg, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, < http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/22187>