Openness + Cohabitation

Openness: allowing for extended possibilities, interpretation, movement or connection in architecture. Cohabitation: the layering of social patterns in mutually beneficial situations. This design-research explores the topics of Openness and Cohabitation in the built environment. Openness is understood as allowing for extended possibilities, interpretation, movement or connection and Cohabitation is the layering of social patterns in a mutually beneficial situation. The design-research investigates how architecture can encourage dynamic socio-spatial relationships across scales, from rooms to streets and the various conditions in between. The underlying approach is pragmatic-utopian. Situated on the site of an existing community centre, iKhwezi, in Gugulethu, the design answers a brief generated from the expressed needs of the community centre combined with parallel theoretical research on select themes. The themes emerged from research of the mat building theory and designing for disassembly. Some of the themes are: urban gesture, degrees of permanence, repetition, playfulness and polyvalency. There is an emphasis on shared and ‘in-between’ spaces throughout the design. The architectural proposition anticipates future growth, allows for the unpredictable and accommodates overlap between differences. Dichotomies such as public and private; indoor and outdoor are sought to be blurred whilst balancing realistic safety and comfort constraints. The project is essentially a mat building which fulfills the needs of an existing community center and contributes to the urban context. This includes extending the facilities and classrooms of the Early Childhood Development (ECD) and adding a larger gym which extends outwards to a public play-street. The existing layers of program and events offer enough social density to create a dynamic mat building through which the ideas of Openness and Cohabitation are explored.