27Th World Congress of Architects

UIA 2021 RIO: 27th World Congress of Architects Architecture as an art of care in historically marginalised communities: the case of Heidedal, South Africa Hendrik Auret University of the Free State, South Africa David van der Merwe University of the Free State, South Africa Abstract South Africa has a long and lamentable attempts at calculative machination, the history of creating urban inequalities in paper proposes and architecture of care calculated ways through legislation and parsimony. inspired by racial prejudice. Twenty-five years after democracy, appropriate ways to Keywords: Heidedal, apartheid, develop these vulnerable, marginalised Heidegger, care, parsimony, inequality, communities remain elusive. One such vulnerable communities place is Heidedal, a historically segregated township of Bloemfontein which today forms part of the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality. Like many similar settlements in South Africa the township is flanked by an industrial buffer zone meant Introduction to separate it from the ‘white city’. Consequently, in addition to being a Heidedal was planned as a segregated township product of vindictive historical policies, the intended to house the ‘coloured community’ of 1 township currently has an uneasy Bloemfontein. Under the apartheid urban relationship with its bleak industrial planning regime it was common practice to surroundings; a potent reminder of past spatially segregate townships by creating injustices. This paper interrogates how industrial buffer zones between them and architects think about such communities in ‘white’ segments of the city (see figure 1). In three ways: first, it questions the historical Heidedal ‘the domestic’ and ‘the industrial’ uncomfortably rub shoulders to this day. In narrative of Heidedal by introducing an which ways can this uneasy discontent be recast alternative phenomenological reading by works of architecture that foster a sense of (inspired by the writings of Martin belonging to the new democratic society Heidegger) revealing the actual scope of through the creative reinterpretation of the corruption that saturated apartheid industrial vestiges of apartheid planning planning. Second, it laments the tendency policies? Specifically, the goal is to promote of architectural phenomenology to avoid appropriate poetic responses to the established questions posed by this kind of settlement, ways of life in marginalised communities, instead focusing its attentions on unspoilt challenge old conflicts and thereby strive or pastoral landscapes. Last, it proposes an towards new forms of contentment and dignified alternative way to think about the dwelling. In a general sense, the aim is to traumatized relationship between the identify significant principles that may be useful settlement, its history and its place by for architects working in other communities considering a project in Heidedal by one of characterised by similar levels of inequality, the authors, a young architect who grew up vulnerability and the assumed conflict between in the township. In response to previous ‘domestic life’ and ‘industrial production’. 512 PAPERS: VOLUME I of III UIA 2021 RIO: 27th World Congress of Architects Figure 1. Bloemfontein, Heidedal and Batho as a ‘model apartheid city’ in 1971 (authors). PAPERS: VOLUME I of III 513 UIA 2021 RIO: 27th World Congress of Architects In philosophical terms, this paper builds on the Cape was extended to Bloemfontein in 1890 attempts to recognize people as ‘beings of care’ the tracks, merely following the topography of pioneered by the German philosopher Martin the terrain, included Waaihoek on the ‘right Heidegger, and recent efforts to understand side’ of the railroad. architecture as an “art of care” and places as “regions of concern” (Auret 2019). Essentially, It was not long before the ‘white town’ felt Heidegger approached care [Sorge] in an threatened by the growth of the location and ontological way rather than proposing it as a starting widening the gulf between the two “special attitude” (1927, 193). Care is the settlements. In 1904 a devastating flood in the ‘precondition’ for the meaningful existence of CBD provided the town council with an excuse mortal beings, i.e. beings who are aware of their to ‘strategically’ funnel the spatial transition mortality, because “in its being this [kind of] between the two settlements – already hemmed being is concerned about its very being” (1927, in between the Fort and the railway – even 12). In other words, care does not prescribe the further by establishing a stone quarry on the way people “ought” to live (Heidegger 1935, eastern side of Fort Hill. Initially, the thirty 150/211), but offers a means to draw near and stands closest to the quarry (and ‘white’ notice the way mortals always already exist as Bloemfontein) were expropriated. However, the beings of emplaced care. Care enables the intimidating effects of the quarry extended far search for meaning, creates the possibility for beyond its physical boundaries due to blasting feeling a sense of belonging (or marginalisation) activities. and directs all aspects of human intentionality. If architects are to find appropriate ways to By 1920, in line with the “universally accepted dignify established ways of life, we believe they principle of segregation”, the council decided to should do so by practising architecture as an art develop “the South-Eastern quarter of the town, of care. To that aim, this paper will first present bounded roughly by the Natal [Railway] line a traditional historical reconstruction of and the Cape line” into a “hygienic Native Heidedal’s origins, which will be followed by a township” which could house “a large Native more rigorous attempt to understand the place as labour supply” (MM 1920, 8). This signalled the a ‘region of concern’. beginnings of the Batho and Heidedal locations and heralded the systematic destruction, through Heidedal, legislation and piecemeal demolition, of a historical reconstruction Waaihoek between 1927 and 1941 (Schoeman 1980, 285). The only alternative to living amid During the first years following Bloemfontein’s the deteriorating conditions in Waaihoek was founding in 1846 the ‘white settlement’ was for black people to relocate to Batho, while established in the topological ‘inside’, formed Heidedal was reserved for the coloured between Naval Hill, Signal Hill and Fort Hill, community. with very little thought given to the settlement patterns of indigenous groups. However, by Heidedal as a region of concern 1861 the matter had become an ‘issue’ for the town council and, in their very first attempt at The story of Bloemfontein, Waaihoek, Batho dealing with the co-existence of different groups and Heidedal illustrate the way in which black in the area, the Town Clerk divided the and coloured people were categorised, divided indigenous population along ethnic lines into and spatially marginalised in a calculated way. three ‘locations’ sited beyond the confines of the In this section we will present Heidedal as a ‘white inside’. One of these locations, already region of concern by exploring the deeper known in 1864 as “Waay-hoek” (which soon effects on these places and their inhabitants changed to the more colloquial Waaihoek), being subjected to the calculating forces of eventually became the most influential ‘native ‘segregation’ and the Heideggarian concept of location’ (Schoeman 1980, 35). It is hard to ‘machination’ (die Machenschaft). There are overstate the historical significance of the those who argue that the ‘tools’ (segregation) settlement, since the African National Congress and ‘thinking’ (machination) of modernism was founded in Waaihoek in 1912. Yet twenty- were merely blunt instruments in the hands of two years before this event the prospects of the the apartheid government, but the story of location were already dealt a mortal blow due to Heidedal implies that acts of strategic spatial a fluke of history. When the railway line from intimidation and calculating policies was well 514 PAPERS: VOLUME I of III UIA 2021 RIO: 27th World Congress of Architects established by the time apartheid was instated by categorisation (1935, 199-202). Heidegger saw the National Party in 1948. In fact, we propose this as a serious “levelling down” of the that considering the situation in terms of the possibility for a dignified and meaningful general sway exerted by calculation and dwelling life, since beings are “preconceived as machination on society is a particularly the orderable, the producible, and the illuminating way to reveal the true depravity of establishable” (1938, 388). Due to the segregationist apartheid policies and the deep machinations of apartheid planning, many may pernicious effects of its stubborn lingering as the also see Heidedal as such a levelled-down place. spatial reality of South Africa. What gifts may the architectural profession offer in order to undermine the effects of Heidegger saw modern technology as a machination? “challenging-forth” (1953, 321) that aims at “efficiency” by unleashing the calculating drive Practicing care in Heidedal towards optimising what can be “unlocked” from beings. Thus, beings are recast as resources Heidegger’s critique of technology is not that may be ordered, mastered and exploited as without hope. In contrast to the modern “standing-reserve” (1953, 322). The result of proclivity for using technology as ‘challenging- such thinking corresponds to the idea of forth machination’ the Greek notion of techne Heidedal as a ‘labour

Load more