Timeless thresholds: adaptive interchanges supporting pedestrian life in Actonville

Abstract

The architectural project derives itself from the richness of its landscape set in Actonville, Benoni. The context places the project within a post-Apartheid framework that displays stains of impoverishment, degradation, contamination, and the dire need for a recreational space, an “In-Between Space”. A space that can act as a threshold to support existing conditions and extend itself to create new programs. Actonville contains multiple existing infrastructures that spill onto a common area, demarcating the chosen site. The conceptual driver of the project is developed around the notion of time and the cycles of reoccurring change it brings about. How can architecture adapt to support and uplift existing communities and their changing needs throughout their daily life? The building translates into a threshold within the existing framework to connect the old with the new, the industrial and residential, and the pedestrian and vehicle. The project develops into a timeless building that houses various programs to become an extension of the existing context. The building is situated within a high-motion setting that creates its identity of movement and frequency. However, it introduces contrasting notions of slowing down, through concepts of fragmenting time to derive programs of continuities and discontinuities. Discontinuities that seek to provide users with an opportunity to slow down in their day and create connections to bridge old and new programs. The building becomes a peripheral heart that extends its continuous threshold into communities, creating continuities of spaces of trade, learning, employment and play. It cuts through spaces by introducing discontinuities such as walkways/bridges and spaces of waiting between thresholds. These spaces will include aspects of memory that are extracted from the history of Actonville.