Our submission to this competition sought to commemorate the idea that freedom is rooted in the everyday and its transformation. That it is a consequence of ordinary peoples’ struggle against oppression.

The submission drew on the local significance of the site, coupling the commemoration of a historical event with the valorization of existing local economies, modes of associational life and ways of being in the city. On Freedom Square, small scale, dynamic, hybrid economies negotiate and share space and time. Taxi drivers, traders, waste recyclers, motor spares suppliers, shoe repairers, and second hand clothes dealers traverse space in a complex, mutually dependant relationship. Space is free here, the functions of the site are not filtered by individual property ownership, and it is free to an ever changing occupation and mode of use.

Kliptown exists as a deeply rich, multiple and overlapping society, where people move between its many functions constantly. Interaction on the street is the primary social activity, remaining at home excludes one from this, as private space is exclusionary, small and cramped. Life on the street edge is however, interactive, surveylant, commercial and vibrant. Here the community consolidates itself.

The Kliptown community place importance in constructing a collective identity, pride and dignity in the area. The ‘Kliptown Our Town’ photographic exhibition of daily life in the township in a building ancillary to the square, will try to capture the multi-layered living experience of Kliptown through the exhibition of photographs and oral histories of the local community. People will become empowered as they participate in the ongoing life of the museum. The scheme will also stretch into the community, feeding it with commercial, uplifting activities. Guided walking tours and historical markers will document the history of the area, celebrating moments of urban memory. Empowerment will also exist in other related activities such as construction, facilities management, retail, etc.

Our scheme sought to conserve and restore important elements of the Kliptown urban fabric. The reinstatement of historical tree lines, the reenactment of Freedom Square, the rebuilding of the Sans Souci Cinema, the restoration of the original farm building and the upgrading of public infrastructure, all sought to conserve the spirit of the Freedom Charter.

The interpretive facility in the scheme would seek to understand the international significance of a place like Freedom Square, a symbol of the achievement of the freedom to be free. The building will function as an interpretive exhibition space, with research elements, documenting ongoing struggles for freedom locally, nationally and internationally.

Our treatment of the actual square acknowledges that, at the time of the congress of the people, it was not a space with any inherent spatial identity of formal congruity. It was simply defined by the backs of buildings, a row of trees, a corrugated iron fence, and its dusty, unpaved surface. What gave it an identity, and significance, were the events which took place in and around it. Through minimal means these absent events are re-enacted and the character of the space remembered. Small gravel stones allow current events and movements to etch their own marks onto the Square’s surface.

The threshold is continuously marked throughout the scheme, by static elements inserted into flowing space. The threshold of the Square will be held by a life-sized image etched onto a steel plate, of the congress of the people. The empty Square is filled, the imagination recollects.

Our proposal also folds up the surface of everyday life in and around Freedom Square and inserts an interpretive layer beneath it. Visitors to the site are able to traverse the Square, but are otherwise contained within a subterranean world of interpretive exhibits. History is made present without disrupting current economies and associational life.

The edges of the folded plane are thickened and socialised with community offices, fronting new circulation routes that connect the informal settlements across the railway line and extend its communal facilities. The North West corner of the building functions as both a museum and community area. Freedom Square will extend into a hall for public gatherings. The roof of the building, traversed by a route on its edge, will be a tilted grass plane looking south onto Freedom Square, here people may sit for large gatherings, or to view soccer matches to the North.

The site from Freedom Square to the Pimville-Dhlamini Road is conceptualized as an urban park. This is not an aristocratic garden, but a play space, where people can exercise and enjoy themselves, thereby participating in public life. The park comprises a soccer field, basket ball field, change rooms, landscaped terraces, graffiti walls and informal seating areas and meeting places of various kinds for traditional dance, drinking, talking etc. The historic row of trees between Union Road and the Pimville-Dhlamini Road will extend Beacon Road as a daily promenade or ritual procession route. Informal traders may cluster under the trees and re-establish their market there. A business development centre will be established in the historic farm precinct, which would be partially restored or poetically completed. It will include training spaces for carpentry and welding, urban agriculture, computer skills, business management and rentable space for SMME’s. A new taxi-rank will be redeveloped to the west of the development centre; the redevelopment will touch the earth gently, introducing curbs, compacted earth and slight level changes, shade, lighting, water points and the paving and drainage of certain areas to improve the existing facility. The areas to the north of the business development centre and the south of Union Road will hold housing and retail respectively.

Pinned in the countless pieces of crumpled paper to the podium of the congress of the people, freedom was not conceived of as a utopian blueprint prepared by leaders or technocrats, but as something rooted in people’s everyday lived experience and its transformation. Our scheme responded directly to this energy, one of people, their environment and the spatial and architectural interventions which could commemorate, uplift and celebrate.

Our submission to this competition sought to commemorate the idea that freedom is rooted in the everyday and its transformation. That it is a consequence of ordinary peoples’ struggle against oppression.

The submission drew on the local significance of the site, coupling the commemoration of a historical event with the valorization of existing local economies, modes of associational life and ways of being in the city. On Freedom Square, small scale, dynamic, hybrid economies negotiate and share space and time. Taxi drivers, traders, waste recyclers, motor spares suppliers, shoe repairers, and second hand clothes dealers traverse space in a complex, mutually dependant relationship. Space is free here, the functions of the site are not filtered by individual property ownership, and it is free to an ever changing occupation and mode of use.

Kliptown exists as a deeply rich, multiple and overlapping society, where people move between its many functions constantly. Interaction on the street is the primary social activity, remaining at home excludes one from this, as private space is exclusionary, small and cramped. Life on the street edge is however, interactive, surveylant, commercial and vibrant. Here the community consolidates itself.

The Kliptown community place importance in constructing a collective identity, pride and dignity in the area. The ‘Kliptown Our Town’ photographic exhibition of daily life in the township in a building ancillary to the square, will try to capture the multi-layered living experience of Kliptown through the exhibition of photographs and oral histories of the local community. People will become empowered as they participate in the ongoing life of the museum. The scheme will also stretch into the community, feeding it with commercial, uplifting activities. Guided walking tours and historical markers will document the history of the area, celebrating moments of urban memory. Empowerment will also exist in other related activities such as construction, facilities management, retail, etc.

Our scheme sought to conserve and restore important elements of the Kliptown urban fabric. The reinstatement of historical tree lines, the reenactment of Freedom Square, the rebuilding of the Sans Souci Cinema, the restoration of the original farm building and the upgrading of public infrastructure, all sought to conserve the spirit of the Freedom Charter.

The interpretive facility in the scheme would seek to understand the international significance of a place like Freedom Square, a symbol of the achievement of the freedom to be free. The building will function as an interpretive exhibition space, with research elements, documenting ongoing struggles for freedom locally, nationally and internationally.

Our treatment of the actual square acknowledges that, at the time of the congress of the people, it was not a space with any inherent spatial identity of formal congruity. It was simply defined by the backs of buildings, a row of trees, a corrugated iron fence, and its dusty, unpaved surface. What gave it an identity, and significance, were the events which took place in and around it. Through minimal means these absent events are re-enacted and the character of the space remembered. Small gravel stones allow current events and movements to etch their own marks onto the Square’s surface.

The threshold is continuously marked throughout the scheme, by static elements inserted into flowing space. The threshold of the Square will be held by a life-sized image etched onto a steel plate, of the congress of the people. The empty Square is filled, the imagination recollects.

Our proposal also folds up the surface of everyday life in and around Freedom Square and inserts an interpretive layer beneath it. Visitors to the site are able to traverse the Square, but are otherwise contained within a subterranean world of interpretive exhibits. History is made present without disrupting current economies and associational life.

The edges of the folded plane are thickened and socialised with community offices, fronting new circulation routes that connect the informal settlements across the railway line and extend its communal facilities. The North West corner of the building functions as both a museum and community area. Freedom Square will extend into a hall for public gatherings. The roof of the building, traversed by a route on its edge, will be a tilted grass plane looking south onto Freedom Square, here people may sit for large gatherings, or to view soccer matches to the North.

The site from Freedom Square to the Pimville-Dhlamini Road is conceptualized as an urban park. This is not an aristocratic garden, but a play space, where people can exercise and enjoy themselves, thereby participating in public life. The park comprises a soccer field, basket ball field, change rooms, landscaped terraces, graffiti walls and informal seating areas and meeting places of various kinds for traditional dance, drinking, talking etc. The historic row of trees between Union Road and the Pimville-Dhlamini Road will extend Beacon Road as a daily promenade or ritual procession route. Informal traders may cluster under the trees and re-establish their market there. A business development centre will be established in the historic farm precinct, which would be partially restored or poetically completed. It will include training spaces for carpentry and welding, urban agriculture, computer skills, business management and rentable space for SMME’s. A new taxi-rank will be redeveloped to the west of the development centre; the redevelopment will touch the earth gently, introducing curbs, compacted earth and slight level changes, shade, lighting, water points and the paving and drainage of certain areas to improve the existing facility. The areas to the north of the business development centre and the south of Union Road will hold housing and retail respectively.

Pinned in the countless pieces of crumpled paper to the podium of the congress of the people, freedom was not conceived of as a utopian blueprint prepared by leaders or technocrats, but as something rooted in people’s everyday lived experience and its transformation. Our scheme responded directly to this energy, one of people, their environment and the spatial and architectural interventions which could commemorate, uplift and celebrate.