Image from sci-fi thriller DISTRICT 9 via Yukon Science fiction Writer

What: A Workshop of Experimental Architecture on the urban border-conditions
Where: Johannesburg (SA)
When: Aug 23 – Sept 10 , 2010
Who: RIEA.ch Research Institute for Experimental Architecture

In a rapidly growing urban world, slums and informal settlements provide shelter for a sixth of the planet’s population and unless effective action is taken they are likely to become the most common form of dwelling on earth by 2030.

Parallel to this critical situation lies another inconvenient truth that architecture as a profession is affecting no more than 5% of what is built every year around the world.

This sounds like the loudest call for Architecture to re-assume its political content and broaden its field of action, or to eventually accept, as a discipline, its irrelevancy in facing new and inevitable urban challenges.

The Silent Borders Workshop, organized and lead by RIEA.ch, will take the megacity of Johannesburg as a case study to investigate the spatial and mental borderlines generated by diverse social, economic, technological and cultural conditions that meet, mix and clash within the city.

The design stage will include the hacking and re-use of temporary structures and construction materials leftover from the 2010 World Cup South Africa with the aim of improving critical border conditions.

Phase 1 will be a general mapping of urban borders crossed by the line of the newly established Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT). This phase will involve mobilizing different existing reference systems out of the fields of architecture, culture, sociology and economy. During this phase lecturers and critics from local Universities and Institutions will be invited to meet the workshop participants and give insights and readings on the urban dynamics of Joburg.

Phase 2 will focus on the design stage. The identified areas of intervention will be directly addressed with design proposals based on existing resources and inhabitant’s assets in connection with the infrastructures provided by the leftovers from the world cup event.

The workshop will last for 3 weeks, and is open to students, professionals and researchers from architecture and other related fields. Full project presentation, call for application, biographies, details, and calendar at riea.ch