Re-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive
Date
2023
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
Re-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive is a study that explores the archiving of township (black) architecture, space and geography. The township, as a residential area originally and currently designed for the occupation of impoverished black people, has become a geography of appropriation, and an extension of radical self-care onto space – a spatial care. Bophelong, a township in the Vaal, is the subject of this study because its history – similar to the history of most South African townships - and lack of architectural archives present an opportunity for this exploration. This study provides a decolonial approach to archiving and curating black architecture, space and geography, considered ‘unarchivable’ by the traditional architectural archive that collects and curates in accordance with scientific empiricism. It is this colonial knowledge-producing tradition that renders township geographies epistemically worthless. Through qualitative re-search methods, this study provides and explores strategies of archiving and curating township architecture and space in such a way that it is politically and epistemically valuable to both its people and the architectural fraternity. It is the hope of this re-search that these strategies may lead to the valuing of such an archive, and to the interrogation of traditional architectural knowledge production and its politics of value.
Description
A research report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Heritage) to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023
Keywords
Bophelong; Emfuleni; Architectural Archive; Black Archive; Re-humanise; Re-member; Re-possess; Black Geography; Black Space; Black Architecture
Citation
Msutu, Bongisa. (2023). Re-curating Bophelong’s Architectural Archive [Master’s dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg].