The Future of Open Building

The Future of Open Building

An Explanation Of The Concept

A street analysis of Commercial Street, Fordsburg and redesigning the street edge
with relevance to the Open Building concept. © Diana Wolny, 2015

When referring to the notion of Open Building, John Habraken argues that the system should mediate between the needs of the individual as well as the community that inhabit the space. This allows for the design of a building or space with different systems that have the potential to be personalised and altered according to the individual’s or community’s needs at neighbourhood level. These conditions offer a sense of ownership, responsibility and care to those inhabitants, therefore creating an opportunity for a safer and cleaner space for them to occupy.

This is achieved through gathering communication and information, mainly on-site, in order to generate an infrastructure that evaluates what is required for the people within that particular neighbourhood. Through this understanding, one can develop an infrastructure that identifies the urban hardware and urban software within a neighbourhood and how it influences its users. Without the individual, the space would become inflexible and standardised and could therefore have a greater potential of failure due to the fact that the needs of the individual or community could not be met.

The relevance of Open Building is important to the individuals within a neighbourhood as it unites levels of decision making with construction as well as control within the system. These levels include the town fabric (the tissue), the base building (the support), and fit-out (the building’s infill). The buildings and infill within a neighbourhood can be transformed and replaced while the town fabric still remains the same.

This system provides the infrastructure the opportunity to reuse its building parts in order to lengthen its life expectancy and thus prevents the accumulation of waste materials which leads to a better design of an infrastructure. The director of OBOM Research Group, Ype Cuperus, states that Open Building is “a multi-facetted concept, with technical, organizational and financial solutions for a built environment that can adapt to changing needs. It supports user participation, industrialization and restructuring of the building process”.

Explorations In Urban Design & Architecture Individual Work Assignment

 Explorations In Urban Design & Architecture

Multi-Layered, Mixed Neighbourhoods In Newtown, Johannesburg

Mint Road, Fordsburg

Following our group urban design framework proposal, we were required to choose a site responding to our group analysis. Our design had to respond to the context into which it was inserted as well as relate back to the Open Building concept. It needed to cater for the diverse needs within the area, a selection of occupancy options and affordability levels.

The main intention of Group A's urban design framework was to link Fordsburg Square to Oriental Plaza via Commercial Road and transform it into a fully pedestrianized walkway. This was the site I was going to focus on upgrading for the community of Fordsburg.

The History Of Fordsburg Square & Oriental Plaza

Artist's impression of the events that formed Fordsburg Square and Oriental Plaza  © Diana Wolny 2015

From January until 14 March 1922, there was a strike against the gold miners and their employers due to a wage cut per shift for the black miners and retrenching the higher paid white miners for more affordable black miners. The strike became an open uprising where the South African Army as well as the Air Force were called in to bombard Fordsburg Square. These miners dug out large trenches next to the municipal toilet on Mint Road, a building that sheltered them from the army and would later become a heritage building to commemorate this day. The South African Air Force were informed to bomb the square from above but hit the nearby Presbyterian Church on Mint Road, which is now also a heritage building within the area. This day became known as the Rand Rebellion or Rand Revolt.

Today, Fordsburg Square is one of the main areas of Indian culture in South Africa and is an extremely colourful and lively meeting place for the community as well as its visitors.

Fietas was a flourishing community consisting of the Indian, White, coloured and Malay population before the 1970's. It was made up of two suburbs, being Pageview and Vrededorp, and in the late 1970's most of the community was forcefully relocated to other suburbs during apartheid under the Group Areas Act. While bulldozers broke down existing homes and the resident's belongings were thrown onto the streets, some people of the community stayed within the area in informal settlements while the majority vacated the area to places such as Lenasia and Eldorado park while the Indian traders regrouped in the space now known as Oriental Plaza.

Today Oriental Plaza is a successful tenant-owned shopping mall where people from all over South Africa come and do their shopping mainly over the weekends. The shop owners provide their customers with a unique shopping experience with great deals in what ever they are selling and is definitely the major attraction within Fordsburg.

My Concept

The Intention of my conceptual design was to allow pedestrians to have an enjoyable and exciting journey between two historical landmarks within Fordsburg.

I began analyzing Commercial Road by marking out the active retail edges, hard and dead edges as well as informal seating and street trade activities. I noticed that the street traders along this edge did not have a specially allocated area for them to operate their business and were also open to the natural elements. 

After defining the areas mentioned above, I then began designing a sheltered space for the street traders that also responded to the active retail edges as well as giving the opportunity to create active edges along the hard and dead edges, not only on the ground level but also at the first level of some buildings. 

I noticed that the restaurants and cafeterias along Mint Road and Central Road did not have formal outside seating for their customers and discovered that this was due to the by-laws within those roads. Due to this observation, i wanted to further activate the edges on Commercial Road by adding outdoor spaces for the public to utilize for whatever their needs would be for that time therefore relating back to the Open Building concept.

I allocated areas for outside seating, sheltered street trade and gave the public a green roof to sit on and enjoy the view points towards Oriental Plaza and Fordsburg Square, further linking the two historical landmarks together. A paved area and water fountain area were also added for the public focusing more towards the children occupying the space, giving them areas to play sports as well as a water play area open to the elements.

I also added more trees within this corridor to aid the public in finding their way easier towards each node when approaching the area off Mint Road, Central Road, Lilian Road and High Street. After this exercise, I began cutting away at buildings on the ground and first floors, added volumes above existing one to two-storey buildings and pushing certain building edges out to create an interesting space for the public to move through down this corridor. I opened up part of Fordsburg Square again to commemorate its sole purpose and enhanced the public and green space in that node with the addition of a fountain area in the middle. I moved these traders down Commercial Road to further upgrade the hard and dead edges within the existing road.

I gave the potential for the public to access possible trading spaces on the first floor of certain buildings from the view points in my structure to further deal with the relationship of the lower and higher levels within the corridor.

Final Presentation

Fordsburg mapping analysis with the history behind Fordsburg Square and Oriental Plaza

Street analysis with concept sketches

Plan of potential activities on Commercial Road

Section through portion of Commercial Road, Fordsburg

Cross section through Commercial Road with precedent studies

Explorations In Urban Design & Architecture Group Work Assignment

 Explorations In Urban Design & Architecture

Multi-Layered, Mixed Neighbourhoods In Newtown, Johannesburg

Overview

The MTech unit went to document information in the Newtown and Fordsburg districts. The class was split into four groups in order to do an in-depth analysis within these four sites and were then asked to compile an urban design framework based on our findings.

As a class, we marked out key nodes within our areas and then discussed how we were going to link them all within our overall urban design framework. 

Overall Urban Design Framework

Overall group presentation

Site model for presentation

After this task, we then moved onto our group urban design frameworks and began altering our areas based on our findings to come up with a development proposal that also responded to our overall scheme. I was part of Group A which focused on Fordsburg and our key nodes were Fordsburg Square and Oriental Plaza.

Mapping of heritage sites as well as analysis of street and building edges

Mapping of types of movement and activities as well as street section analysis through the site

Group A: UDF proposal

New building, green space and parking allocations in Fordsburg

New building allocations above and near existing buildings.
View from Oriental Plaza entrance looking towards Commercial Road