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The team says that the fire escape and elevator shaft are completely blocked . Two stories are flooded with dirty water and three stories are high with trash – which was represented by a 3.8m high installation sculpture , through which gallery-users could pass , built by Johnson .
Johnson conducted several methodologies and techniques . Among these were surveys , questionnaires and interviews conducted with the people who lived there , during the threeyear research period . The results were plastered on the walls throughout the gallery space . Questions like ‘ Do you know somebody who has died in Dark City ?’ to which an alarming 80 % of the people said yes and 62 % reflected that those people were stabbed to death . However , far more alarming was the 22 % due to sickness and 12 % due to dehydration – a sobering reminder of just who how city decides to cater for and whom it does not . Although the building is ridden with violence and theft , there are dedicated floors that the residents have termed as no-go areas . One of the residents said , “ We don ’ t go to the third floor , that ’ s where the tsotsis live .”
Artwork of Dark City .
ON WINNING THE 28 TH NATIONAL COROBRIK AWARD
The award makes Hariwe Johnson the best graduating Architect and Master ’ s student in South Africa . “ Winning this award , in terms of the cash prize , means I can now contribute to continuing our research in ' Dark City ' and the other buildings we are working in . When I won the ( regional ) first place for R8 000 , I put 40 percent of that amount towards our work into this research . In continuing this pattern , 40 percent of the national award will also be put towards the continuation and amplification of this research and design ,” says Johnson .
Any financial proceeds achieved by ‘ The Dark City ‘ project have always been reinserted back into continuing research but also site visits , collaborative sculptures , food and clothes for the inhabitants .
Inspiration for his thesis came from the drive to challenge the normative student project convention of ‘ Problem-then-a-solution ’ with the building being the solution . “ I wanted to set my own brief where I could explore the limits of architects ' skills and their training . I asked myself : What if a project could potentially have multiple manifestations / outcomes ?” he says .
Johnson wanted to do a project in the inner-city as typical architectural projects were usually within and / or on an open or clear site and are therefore safer and less challenging . “ I was aware that inner-city development , in Johannesburg , was largely outsourced ( by the City ) to the private sector – so I wanted to know what happens when the City abandons its buildings and people ,” he says .
Professor Lesley Lokko who supervised Johnson ’ s thesis and congratulated him on winning this award , says that his project shows a determination to get as far under the skin
Design drawing of one of the housing schemes that the inhabitants and Hariwe Johnson designed . In total , there were about 50 designs critiquing the discipline of architectural training .
of any given situation and to be able to understand it properly , deeply and without compromise . The project was also unusual in that it was both a design thesis and a design thesis critique . “ The win was a validation of Hariwe ’ s determination and considerable skill in pulling it off as well as a validation of the school ’ s position – that it was the school ’ s job to provide the critical framework for as wide a range of interests and ideas as possible and to resist a design orthodoxy that forces students to conform ,” she says .
“ Although his thesis is very firmly rooted in South Africa – and in Johannesburg in particular – his critique can be said to be global . The architectural profession is moving in so many different ways , encompassing so many different fields from engineering to disaster relief , from project management to project coordination , from urban to intimate , from socially-responsible design to high finance and sustainable materials , that it is almost impossible to train an architect to do everything ,” says Professor Lokko .
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