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Get the Hell out of this Town

Part 2 Project 2005
Bruce Wilson
University of Pretoria | South Africa
A newly-integrated society, an emergent economy and rapid urbanisation have coalesced to a critical point in South Africa’s capital city, demanding that her people redefine the constructions which form the social and built environment. A reinvention of the traditional principles of initiation (appropriate to the 21st century African urban context) offers the opportunity for reconciling these emergent elements into life-giving, equitable and sustainable ways to live, think, feel, work, build and relax in the city. The proposed urban initiation centre becomes the platform to, quite literally, ‘get the hell out of this town.’
Bruce Wilson


The Pretoria Architecture School occupies a unique position in the Southern African context, negotiating between Universalism and the realities of African Localism effecting architecture. Regarding this, the thesis represents an ideal achievement by translating a topical theoretical position into a locally appropriate proposition. It confronts the realm of discourse through material abstraction in which architecture is conceived and understood through built matter. Architectural elements are reconfigured through a considered process of re-evaluation entering into a dialogue between idea and matter. The measure of the work is found in the consistency of translation from theory to form and detailed tectonic resolution.

2005
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