Heart of culture

The project assesses the potential of cultural space to remedy the urban legacy issues of Modernist and Apartheid planning by altering the Foreshore fabric whilst also questioning the modus of the contemporary museum typology by focusing on the value of interstitial and auxiliary space.

Cape Town’s Foreshore precinct consists of large scale bureaucratic and infrastructural buildings organized in rigid 20th century fashion creating a hard and windswept environment. The precinct was envisioned as exemplar of the South African Apartheid city – Rational, dominant and monolithic. The result is an inhumane and austere urban condition lacking in civic vitality. This proposal envisions the utilization of cultural space as a Dionysian imposter. A scheme which superficially, stylistically and materially respects its context but deploys radically different spatial philosophies to generate a public-cultural anchor which bridges the existing context into an emergent future condition. This includes Inverting the existing Modernist footprint found in the surrounds by pushing all structures to the edges of the site. Maximizing public access by generating public trafficable roof planes. Stepping down the urban scale to a more human scale. And by providing refuge from the harsh vehicular plane through elevating the user onto a public plinth and enveloping them using an activated edge condition. But current museum and performance venue typologies cannot readily achieve this. In this instance the programmatic hierarchy of importance of cultural space is inverted with what is traditionally considered auxiliary or interstitial public spaces is given maximal importance with museum space acting then as infill. Controlled aperture is then utilized as a means of generating unity between the traditionally monastic museum space and the vibrancy of the public condition using a series of openings that all intentionally generate dramatic moments of programmatic overlap. This scheme explores the ability of cultural space to act as urban stitch, public anchor and civic heart to remedy spatial issues of the past whilst questioning the modus of contemporary museum typologies.