Makings of a resolution...

Renders still in progress...

The views of one passing through the route.

Process: Form

Process: Program/ Function

Process: Context

In considering a specific site within the chosen site, one has considered the part of the site where the dividing features between the site and its context stand out most prominently. The western edge of the 44 Stanley precinct, with its back turned towards Milpark, a high fortress poses an interesting challenge. This boundary will be considered as the interface wherewith to initiate design proposals. Other qualities of selected portion of site:

- Visible from Barry Hertzog highway, allowing visual opportunities and a wider audience for which the museum is to narrate the story of Johannesburg.

Edge condition: High Fortress walls, cutting site off from context

Site: Lies across from an active node. Highway acting as another boundary between site and context

- Chosen portion of the site along active routes to and from high active nodes. High pedestrian, vehicle and public transportation network along the edv

 

Available space on the edge of site provides opportunity for intervention where the museum may be both outside and within the site simultaneously. Slope of site also offers landscape oportunities.

Thoughts while generating design

Going back to the brief: the intent of the brief calling us to, unpacking and restitching the chosen enclave to its surrounding contexts with a narrative tying back to the legacies and stories of Johannesburg. 

An image from the first design project (Topography| Topology) reflecting my current understanding of the city. Broken up, detached. The current condition which still leaves much room for interpretation. The current condition of which 44 Stanley is a part.

Such is the legacy of Johannesburg...

Concept...

In response to the brief, one will be considering the museum as a tool by which the story and legacy of Johannesburg may be narrated. 
One notes that much of what makes up the condition of Johannesburg as the broken up, complex, fragmented and broken up city is caused by the boundaries existent throughout the city (some more obvious/subtle than others). These being ranging from a collective cluster of physical to social.

General Concept
The interfaces between the multifarious pieces of the city serve as boundaries between the parts of the city (in this case those parts are 44 Stanley and Milpark). The concept behind this museum proposes to use these interfaces as the starting for design in aiming to create a dialogue between the 2 context, exposing the inside (of 44) to the condition of the outside immediate context (Milpark) and likewise exposing the condition of the outside to the in.  The intended experience of the museum is that of the users of the museum acting as the links between the 2 contexts.

Interfaces between contexts acting as boundaries

Interfaces acting as point of dialogue between contextx.

Thoughts on the condition of Johannesburg and it's relation to 44 Stanley

Milpark, the Context of 44 Stanley 

An image which I think really captures one of the defining qualities of the current condition of the city of Johannesburg. Just a stones-throw away from 44 Stanley is Mipark. One sees the striking contrast between the 2, though not too far off from one another (developed | degenerating; rich | deprived ). A reiteration of the statement by Caldiera cited previously, that the "mechanisms to keep [the rich and the poor] apart have become more obvious and more complex."

One notes the divisive mechanisms in the image: The high 44 Stanley walls shutting outsiders out and containing the the precinct within; but also, as in many cases throughout the city, the highway being between the 2 creating a marked buffer zone.

 The 2 contexts, 44 Stanley and Milpark, are detached from each other due to these divisive mechanisms, the existing boundaries between the 2.

DETACHMENT - FRAGMENTED - BOUNDARY - CONTRAST
The story of Johannesburg, and 44 Stanley (a part of the whole)