3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions

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    A critical analysis of how Independent Power Producers (IPP’s) can help to secure a sustainable future for post-mining towns in South Africa through new models of architectural practices, to promote the renewal of architecture as a means of creating new realities and being drivers of sustainable change
    (2018) Harrison, Peter Carleton
    This thesis aims to understand the role that Independent Power Producers (IPP’s) can play in the renewal of architectural firms in creating new realities and how these firms can once again become drivers of social change. Kathu (Northern Cape), a steel mining town, is facing the reality that it will have to survive without a mining house and the community funding that results from its operations soon. There are three IPP’s within a 50km radius of Kathu. Under the current funding structure all 3 IPP’s have to contribute to socio-economic development (SED) and enterprise development (ED) within Kathu. According to the Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (IPPP’s), IPP’s are required to provide 1% of gross turnover to community funds for SED and ED development programmes. Where this funding differs from funding obtained from mining houses is that renewable energy is effectively limitless. Despite IPP’s having a projected lifespan of 20 years they will continue to be redeveloped and upgraded. These upgrades will allow for longevity of revenue, which in turn allows for sustained support for the communities surrounding them. Funding structures that are being used to disseminate mining house funds to the communities are suffering from governance issues. This means that the communities do not receive the most effective or necessary forms of development. Through a new typology of architectural practice, the way these funds are managed and utilised can create better environments for those communities. This new typology of architectural firm must move away from the corporate and profit driven nature of modern architectural firms and more towards a ‘Rural Studio’ model. This is where the primary focus is on the community and how to best serve the needs of the people. In doing so SED projects would be more effective in bringing about social change, creating new realities for communities and drivers of sustainability in post-mining towns in South Africa.
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    (Re)mining wastelands: a landscape approach to unlocking the latent potential of Johannesburg’s brownfield sites
    (2017) Wilken, Charldon
    The modern day cultural landscape of man is no longer shaped by mere geology – but by the forces of culture, economics, social activity, politics and technology (Silva, 2012). Still, there are cases where geographical scars divide the cityscape, leaving voids in infrastructure and islands of open space within a thriving metropolis around these vacant patches of land. These vacant patches of land are often termed brownfield sites – once productive infrastructural components actively contributing to the formation of cities and industry. The mining belt of Johannesburg and some of its surrounds (particularly the area around the Heidelberg interchange and Faraday taxi rank) is a classic example where open patches of land exist, surrounded by a concrete jungle which is Johannesburg – “a world class African city” (joburg. org). According to Steyn (2007) the rate of urbanisation in Africa far exceeds that of the western world, which means that un-programmed, unprotected open land becomes soft targets for those prospecting ‘statistics’ flocking to the city – lured by the illusion of opportunity. Centrally located open land therefore becomes an extremely valuable commodity – a commodity that may aid in dealing with the rapid urbanisation issues that 21st century cities face. Not only are urbanities of the 21st century confronted by issues of rapid urbanisation and urban sprawl, but these urbanities need to combat issues in three omnipresent spheres – environmental, social and economic. It is within urban planning that these spheres have their closest overlap (Un-Habitat, 2009) and it is within this overlap that the concepts of resilience and sustainability can be best explored. As a result of their primary use, these fragmented wastelands are not well-suited for living, but do sometimes become the dwelling places of people willing to live in sub-standard living conditions. The mining belt of Johannesburg and its immediate surrounds is littered with brownfield sites - sites that share the characteristics of polluted, underutilised, fragmented, large stretches of vacant land, and are lacking in programme and urban form. This dissertation aims to pioneer a type of urban design uniquely developed for urban void landscapes – leftover sites otherwiseknown as brownfields – whilst addressing greater issues of sustainability and resilience. The study strives to understand how a landscape approach to urban design can be applied to revive and reclaim the drosscapes of Johannesburg. By reviewing a body of literature surrounding the theme of sustainable urbanism and investigating theories such as landscape urbanism, ecological urbanism, and compact cities, combined with understanding the life cycles of brownfield sites and how these sites can be revived to aid in solving issues faced by the 21st century city, the designer hopes to distill a set of urban design principles that can be applied over a variety of scales and integrated with other disciplines to revive brownfield sites and transform them into productive urban landscapes. Additionally, the designer endeavors to express the value of centrally located land; bridge the divide created by post-industrial landscapes; understand brownfield remediation processes and time-lines; integrate urban programmes and systems and link to and expand existing urban networks, based on the assumption that the drosscapes of Johannesburg possess the latent potential to positively add new dimensions to the current urban condition
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    Landscapes in transition: a holistic approach to re-mediating social, economic and environmental ecologies disfigured by mining
    (2017) Liechti, Matthew Hans
    The memories associated with mining are vastly contrasting; ranging from nostalgic recollections of the fortune on which Johannesburg was built to the torturous conditions the miners had to endure both above and below the surface. The essay by the author entitled “Memory retention and cessation in the historical and present context of South Africa and abroad” aims to engage with critically, and explore, the field of memory in relation to mining and broader issues. It is of great importance when establishing a heritage project that the people who engage with it must be able to do so without causing distress or emotional anguish. Can a contextually relevant space be created for the housing and display of such memories? This research report views remediation through a holistic lens that is an approach to the project in its entirety. Remediation is viewed as an approach to solving the fractured nature of Benoni, separated by mining and Apartheid planning, creating ‘buffer zones’ between previously racially orientated areas. The site is a previous ‘buffer zone’ and has not changed its function since it was constructed in 1888. The toxic, disused land offers an opportunity to reclaim what industry has taken away from ‘nature’. Can this ‘buffer zone’ be activated to connect the segregated suburbs of Benoni further? Remediation will also be used as a vehicle for the regeneration of the site, with the aim to return it to a similar ecological state as it was before the mining industry began to alter it. The site has been scarred by the mining industry for over 128 years, polluting both the surface and the sub-surface environment. Can the effects of the temporary environmental degradation be neutralised? The reprocessing of the mine dump has initiated the remediation process, removing around 40 million tonnes of waste (“Transvaal Has Largest Dam In the World” 1950, Vol 56, No. 15 731) from the site, re-mining it, and sending the waste to selected dump sites across the Rand. The Remediation of Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) will reduce the associated noxious effects on the local biosphere, induce a ripple effect further downstream the Blekboskpruit and further on towards the Vaal Dam, where we obtain our drinking water. This example of passive AMD remediation aims to stand as a watershed project that may be adopted and adapted at other sites with similar needs. Is the use of a low-tech, passive wetland system appropriate for AMD remediation and the site? This project aims to be a cultural precinct to objectively display the history of mining in Johannesburg. It does so while being a functioning centre for AMD remediation, in pursuit of solutions for the damage that our mining legacy has had on the landscape and the environment. The Urban Mining facility seeks to create a flagship electronic waste (e-waste) recycling centre that will not only have a positive impact on the local environment but reduce the amount of e-waste being transported illegally to developing countries around the world. Keywords: Acid Mine Drainage, Urban Mining, Remediation, Mining Museum, Benoni
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    Mindscape: reintegrating institutions, land(scapes) and communities on the Parktown Ridge
    (2016) Pincus, Lindy Lee
    The landscape of Parktown tells a story of possession, dispossession, building and demolition. This thesis challenges the history of the Parktown ridge as always being a place that has been associated with hegemony, elitism and uncertainty. Instead, it asks: Can the ridge become a nurturing environment, a place of ‘meditative pause’? Can it become a cathartic place that reshapes new territorial orders? In order to do this, two main contextual issues are explored; institutions and land... Institutions - Parktown forms a large part of the institutional belt of the city. However, these institutions lie like an archipelago; they are urban islands that do not interact with one another. This project challenges and deconstructs the traditional notion of the institution as being trapped in a modernist paradigm - caught up in a late modernist definition of health, body and mind that speaks of authority, control and isolation. The building thus becomes the antithesis of this; it is an open, permeable structure that becomes a public space. The programme of the building aims to re-conceive the institutions’ role in the city. It provides a framework for the currently separated health, education and business communities of Parktown to interact with one other and cross pollinate their knowledge in the hope that new transgressive orders will emerge. Being sited next to the largest institution, the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, allows it to become a central gathering space in Parktown and provides the opportunity for the new structure to start interacting with the hospital. It focuses on the importance of mental health in two manners; it provides a framework where visitors and outpatients can deal with their trauma, loss and illness in a holistic environment. Secondly, it explores the myth that the hospital is a contained object, and looks to explode the issue of health and allow the hospital to have a reciprocal relationship with the city. The building becomes a central hub where research experiments are carried out in the city by citizens to study the mental health of the city. Land - Parktown lies on the Witwatersrand ridge; the founding and defining feature of the Witwatersrand. However, the ridge’s narrative of mining has perhaps remained stagnant and has not evolved after mining. Man has become disconnected from the land and the project sees the ridge as a device through which this relationship can be repaired, as the ridge moves into a new generation. This thesis emerges when architecture is used as the method through which these two issues, of institutions and land, interrogate and interrupt each other. Harmony between nature versus geometry is explored, which results in a ‘lyrical brutalist’ style. ‘Land’ or nature is used to humanise the ordered, authoritarian nature of the institution as it carves itself into the building and fragments and softens the rigidity of the gridded concrete structure. Symbiotically, the building gives new importance to the traumatised landscape of the ridge. With nature becoming such an important part of the building, man is encouraged to reconnect with the land. The ridge no longer becomes a barrier between the north and the south, but a connector, bringing communities together. The intervention becomes a place of refuge, a sanctuary in the modernist landscape. It is a landscape of re-cognition and encourages one to think more holistically; to break away from the traditional geometries that have dominated how we think and have new embodied experiences with the land. In so doing, the project not only acts as a catalyst in the rehabilitation of the scarred natural landscape but also speculates on an alternative future for technology, health and education. It gives a new level of social and cultural significance to the hospital and surrounding institutions, while reclaiming a land we feel disconnected from. Key words: Parktown, ridge, nature, concrete, land, landscape, institutions, hospital, education, communities
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    City of refuge
    (2016) Marcus, Asher
    No Abstract
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