Making memory space : recollection and reconciliation in post apartheid South African architecture
Creators: name: Leibowitz, Vicki
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: Post Apartheid South Africa presents a fascinating platform from which to discuss the complexity and contestations around the creation of memory space. Through examination of multiple modes of dealing with memorials and museums, (the traditional and conventionally understood emblems of authoritative memory), this thesis seeks to explicate how memory is addressed in a society that is attempting to come to terms with a recent past. In so doing, it aims to understand how memory becomes codified into architectural space, how that physical manifestation may be altered over time, and examines some of the complexity inherent in creating new spaces that seek to represent an often volatile and contested past. The traditional palette of the architect: materiality, site, aesthetics and form all contribute to creation of new national narratives and in so doing, reveal the difficulties in re vising existing memories as they are articulated through architecture. <br><br>In order to appreciate how South Africa specifically is approaching memory, I have established a taxonomy that highlights differing modes for dealing with the physicalisation of recollection. Within each case study, questions arise over the success and failures of each modality, which lead to broader discussions about opportunities for gaining insight into how memory space may be addressed in other countries, those facing a colonial past or coming to terms with recent memory themselves. While it does not present a comparative analysis, this thesis seeks to illuminate some of the difficulties inherent in the creation and maintenance of memory space that accurately reflects the population it purports to serve, while generating 'meaningful' architecture. <br><br>The study is broken down into the following components: <br><br>TOPPLING TOTEMS The Voortrekker Monument is an examination into existing architectures of an out-dated regime, questioning how meaning is ascribed to architectural space and seeking to understand how easily that significance may be revised. <br><br>EXPERIENTIAL MUSEUMS The Apartheid Museum presents case studies of how memory is conveyed meaningfully to contemporary society, looking at the international language of museums, questioning how specificity is lost in a desire to situate the past on a world stage. The economy and commoditisation of memory forms a central component of this study. <br><br>CANNIBALISED SPACE The Constitutional Court offers an investigation into the repatriation of spaces potent as sites of trauma. It examines how sites of trauma become significant places for recollection and presents spatial opportunities for a form of rehabilitation of those sites. <br><br>SOCIALLY INTEGRATED MEMORY The Red Location Museum presents a study of a new mode of creating official narratives of recollection within a society resistant to official narratives. It looks at architectural solutions to situating memory within the daily life of a society rather then distinguishing official memorials by setting them and by association recollection apart. <br><br>Ultimately through an examination of the treatment of memory space in South Africa, issues around the complexity of dealing with memory in general become apparent. The aim of this thesis is to draw out some of these narratives so that they may elucidate some of the broader relationships between architecture and collective memory.