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The team says that the fire escape and elevator shaft are completely blocked. Two stories are flooded with dirty water and three stories are high with trash – which was represented by a 3.8m high installation sculpture, through which gallery-users could pass, built by Johnson.
Johnson conducted several methodologies and techniques. Among these were surveys, questionnaires and interviews conducted with the people who lived there, during the threeyear research period. The results were plastered on the walls throughout the gallery space. Questions like‘ Do you know somebody who has died in Dark City?’ to which an alarming 80 % of the people said yes and 62 % reflected that those people were stabbed to death. However, far more alarming was the 22 % due to sickness and 12 % due to dehydration – a sobering reminder of just who how city decides to cater for and whom it does not. Although the building is ridden with violence and theft, there are dedicated floors that the residents have termed as no-go areas. One of the residents said,“ We don’ t go to the third floor, that’ s where the tsotsis live.”
Artwork of Dark City.
ON WINNING THE 28 TH NATIONAL COROBRIK AWARD
The award makes Hariwe Johnson the best graduating Architect and Master’ s student in South Africa.“ Winning this award, in terms of the cash prize, means I can now contribute to continuing our research in ' Dark City ' and the other buildings we are working in. When I won the( regional) first place for R8 000, I put 40 percent of that amount towards our work into this research. In continuing this pattern, 40 percent of the national award will also be put towards the continuation and amplification of this research and design,” says Johnson.
Any financial proceeds achieved by‘ The Dark City‘ project have always been reinserted back into continuing research but also site visits, collaborative sculptures, food and clothes for the inhabitants.
Inspiration for his thesis came from the drive to challenge the normative student project convention of‘ Problem-then-a-solution’ with the building being the solution.“ I wanted to set my own brief where I could explore the limits of architects ' skills and their training. I asked myself: What if a project could potentially have multiple manifestations / outcomes?” he says.
Johnson wanted to do a project in the inner-city as typical architectural projects were usually within and / or on an open or clear site and are therefore safer and less challenging.“ I was aware that inner-city development, in Johannesburg, was largely outsourced( by the City) to the private sector – so I wanted to know what happens when the City abandons its buildings and people,” he says.
Professor Lesley Lokko who supervised Johnson’ s thesis and congratulated him on winning this award, says that his project shows a determination to get as far under the skin
Design drawing of one of the housing schemes that the inhabitants and Hariwe Johnson designed. In total, there were about 50 designs critiquing the discipline of architectural training.
of any given situation and to be able to understand it properly, deeply and without compromise. The project was also unusual in that it was both a design thesis and a design thesis critique.“ The win was a validation of Hariwe’ s determination and considerable skill in pulling it off as well as a validation of the school’ s position – that it was the school’ s job to provide the critical framework for as wide a range of interests and ideas as possible and to resist a design orthodoxy that forces students to conform,” she says.
“ Although his thesis is very firmly rooted in South Africa – and in Johannesburg in particular – his critique can be said to be global. The architectural profession is moving in so many different ways, encompassing so many different fields from engineering to disaster relief, from project management to project coordination, from urban to intimate, from socially-responsible design to high finance and sustainable materials, that it is almost impossible to train an architect to do everything,” says Professor Lokko.
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MARCH- APRIL 2017
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