6th São Paulo International Biennale of Architecture and Design
Living in cities: Reality Architecture Utopia
South Africa 2005: Utopia. Nowhere. Close.
+ South African Contemporary Architecture - curated by sharpCITY
This country monograph show represents the first international exhibition dedicated to Contemporary South African Architecture focussing on works produced during the first 10 years of Democracy.
Landscape is employed in the curatorial strategy to contextualise 50 projects that can be considered outstanding and relevant in terms of architectural production. In a developing context where the forces of societal migration and transformation exist in sharp contrast to unrelenting commercial development, architectural quality remains sparse.
Within South African cities and their vast surroundings, these interventions represent points of acupuncture releasing the tension contained in the social, physical and psychological landscapes of a nation.
South Africa may be perceived as being on the edge of global mainstream culture; however, this 'edge culture', this condition of being at the fringe, in fusion, post-apartheid, and embracing our diversity, inspires a uniquely South African identity.
This exhibition is a celebration and expression of the many overlapping, sometimes competing, never fully realised utopias in a landscape of possibilities.
+ The Concept
In contrast to the saturated cultural landscapes of the 'developed world' the South African landscape is raw, primal, overwhelming and vast in its relative emptiness. This almost utopian beauty conceals the fault lines of social and political complexity that cross the South African landscape.
South Africa's cities are marked by scars bearing witness to the undercurrent tension of an all too recent past of separation, discrimination and isolation.
Yet, our cities are Landscapes of Desire and people magnets, and the rifts of social and political complexity do not tear our cities apart. Democratic, racially de-legislated cities attract waves of rural immigrants and fortune-seekers from all over Africa. Capitalism and informality are contesting the city from opposing poles of need and desire. Far from a generally projected Utopian project of architecture and urbanism, meaningful architectural interventions remain scarce, representing points of acupuncture releasing the built up tension in a landscape in transition.
Globally, we share challenges like massive and rapid urbanisation with other cities, and produce cities that are horizontally extending and anti-urban. Globally, we are on the edge of central concerns, on the edge of mainstream culture, or to use a popular phrase, we are 'edge culture', we are fringe, we are fusion, we are post-, we are united by the promise that lives in diversity.
Architects work in the ethical realm, on the dividing edge between commitment to meaningful change and continuity of inherited patterns. The profession is sometimes complicit in physically entrenching separation brought about by ignorance and paranoia. At other times, through new building types, through new relationships to history, through critical interpretations of landscape and place, or through the way in which work is procured and produced with and for communities, architects are creatively confronting change and adding to change through their work.
The more relevant work finds ways of embracing informality and difference by exploring the spaces and uses of an emerging South African reality. Perhaps a criteria for interrogating these projects is the extent to which each one finds the beauty in the necessity and makes the necessary beautiful.
At the base of our professional life lies the search for a better, a more ideal, and a utopian world. We aim higher and win lower. This exhibition is a celebration of those great, bitterly fought for, contaminated fragments of utopia which we have produced in a landscape of great opportunity. Utopia is nowhere, but in South Africa, it is often tantalisingly close.
