DANIEL FOUCHÉ NELSON MANDELA UNIVERSITY ‘ The Design of a Performance Space for the Zip Zap Circus in the Johannesburg City Centre ’
Historically , news of a travelling circus coming to town created an atmosphere of anticipation and excitement among all ages within a community . Normally , the daily lives of the townspeople were a monotonous routine , making the flamboyancy of the circus ’ s arrival an occasion to remember ; the biggest day of the year showcased the greatest show on earth . Reality as we know it is complex , and often more unfair to some than it is to others . To provide an occasion is to provide a moment in time that is different from what is normal . Occasion lies between man and architecture ; the scientific nature of space and time is humanised as place and occasion , meaningfully ordered by architecture .
The design for occasion in the form of a performance space aims to bring not only unique celebration , but both emotional and physical upliftment to Johannesburg and its city dwellers through the circus ideal ; a city that was once the home of jazz , art , politics , and insurgent popular aspirations now represents inner-city decay , dereliction , and urban sprawl .
The outcome is a world-class act that promotes organisations like Zip Zap that create social cohesion , opportunities , and unlocks skills transfer to South African youth from otherwise disadvantaged situations . By proving a unique cultural experience through moments of an event , people are given the opportunity to escape their reality and momentarily believe in a little bit of magic .
Throughout her years at university , Daniel discovered a passion for eccentric postmodern architecture and wanted to use this opportunity to explore its relevance in a very specific South African context . The UK collective Archigram responded to the grey modernist environment with an architecture that responded directly to placemaking by emphasising architecture as a human ’ s sensual experience ; inundated through extreme colour , sub-cultures of industry and entertainment , film , sex , science fiction , and other derivates of hyper-consumerism .
It is this not-so-serious serious response that allows us to see architecture as an expression of human culture but , even more specifically , South African culture . “ The exploration of our local expressions , textiles , patterns , technologies , and character can start to inform a playful yet incredibly meaningful and relevant architecture ,” says Daniel .
She concludes : The idea of architecture as a tool to bring the wide-eyed ideas seen in intangible dreams and fictional stories , as not only an attempted response to our real-world issues but exploitation of its chaotic nature , makes our human experience nothing short of magical . It ’ s taking the fantasies and cultural identities of people and creating an architecture responding to that uniqueness that starts to develop and transform specific socioeconomic aspects from a personal foundation .
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