The politics of design funding

We got to site very early yesterday (Thursday) to measure the depths of all the balusters and thus determine the length at which our C-sections should be cut. The process went smoothly and we were able to get the information to Fleet Steel by 10am so that they could begin. The remarkable, wonderful sight when we arrived was of a clean beerhall, confirming Stan’s excited call to Guy on Wednesday to say that he must ‘Come now!’ Mr Cindi, Stan, Dudley, Amos, Eric and some volunteers from the ANC Youth League had spent the last few days clearing rubbish and sweeping. This was a mark of a real investment by members of the community in the project. By mid-morning, our new band of volunteers had begun to reassemble to finish off the last remaining spot on the east side. At first, it was tricky working out the dynamics of this group as they had really just appeared out of nowhere. Robyn and I went off to buy gloves and face masks because the wind was sweeping up the dust terribly. We also bought rolls and apples and chips and Coke which we shared on our return. There were a number of things happening, including appointments with subcontractors for quotes, arranging workshops with the local primary school, etc, but when Hannah and the Germans arrived, their impression was clearly that nothing was happening on site. This was an unfortunate assumption as Hannah then started telling us what to do, and how not to lose people’s energy. She also briefed us on the Germans’ reactions to our drawings pinned up in the KwaThema room back at Wits. They had apparently been distressed at the ‘fixed’ quality of the design with no evidence of the process of having come to it. Hannah’s suggestion, in the light of their comments, that we not build anything was very difficult to take on board, having just confirmed an order for R5000’s worth of steel. Then came a little Q&A with Christopher and Berndt in which their main line of inquiry seemed to be how we had arrived at our design. My answer – probably somewhat defensive – was that, yes, we had, to a very large degree, and under strict scheduling pressures, imposed the programme on the site, based on a limited amount of observation of its use and of interaction with the community. The process-based approach that they seemed to want had simply not been catered for in our very tight seven-week course in which the emphasis had been on coming very quickly to a design, and then sourcing materials, because building would take place in the last three weeks. Oh boy!
Later in the morning, Gary Theodosioeu, a consultant from the Cement and Concrete Institute, arrived on site, as we’d arranged. His examination with Guy was very thorough and his assessment was that there were some serious spots which were problematic but which in order to be fixed would need to be broken back, and sealed before being patched. He proposed that we use props in these troublesome spots and reassured us that nothing would fall down in the next ten years.
We also heard a sample of potential poetry for our launch from Loli and Molin who I’d tracked down off a poster advertising a Freedom Day poetry and picnic event. Mpumi also wants to perform which is great, and Lawrence made some encouraging noises about not having written in a while… We also had a workshop session with all the volunteers to explain the project to those who were new and to discuss the launch. Lunga said he was a DJ and could organise sound for us. We were further cheered up in the afternoon by a fantastic group effort in clearing the mounds of earth, rubble and rubbish on the south and west sides of the beerhall. Everyone seemed to be glowing with a real sense of achievement. Late in the afternoon Robyn stopped and harnessed a huge yellow roller driving down the road and rode back with the drivers to the site where they squashed down our growing pile of rubbish with great drama. The braai at Stan’s in the evening was fun though we went home feeling confused and apprehensive about the turn of events and having lost out sense of humour.
This morning, Gareth and I met at Fleet Steel to collect the C-sections. I panicked when I saw their size, deciding that we had seriously over-spec’d them, but back at varsity Robyn, Guy and Gareth thought they looked good. After offloading into the workshop, we decided to pay Fischer a visit with a member to check that the anchors we had discussed with Kerry would still be appropriate. He was still away, but we had a meeting with Richard, his brother, who was equally generous and friendly. Expecting only to get some technical advice, we left with 100 bolts and a fantastic borrowed battery-operated concrete drill in hand.
In the afternoon, we had a ‘workshop’ with the Germans. Hannah opened the meeting by suggesting that our designs were ‘premature’ and ‘precocious’ and questioning the politics at stake – why were we doing what we were doing, was one of many questions to be asked about the politics of the process. It turned out that Christopher and Berndt’s agenda is to assemble as much material as possible on the design process for exhibition and publication and thus it seemed a pity that their intentions had not been made clear to Hannah or to us from the start. They suggested we look like children at the context – I think they meant with fresh eyes but it sounded rather romantic and idealised. Their proposal was that we should define or design a ‘first step’ only but that this must be the right step in order to open up possibilities – which seemed like an impossibility: there can surely be no such thing as a single, right first step. They said there was no way they could show our PhotoShopped images in Germany: perhaps they were too cheesy and unsophisticated for that audience, and also not what was expected from gritty Africa. These images were something that Hannah has repeatedly and specifically requested – she had thought they were good tools for selling the scheme to the council. The Germans wanted a meta-analysis of every document explaining its role in the whole design process. There seemed to be a dichotomy between the design-build brief that we had got and their expectation of a focus on the relationship between politics and design which was the basis on which the grant had been given. Hannah closed things off by helpfully pointing to the tension between the reduction of choices that by definition traditional building carries out and the process of opening up the meaning of a site. Could we cap the power of architecture by using certain forms which were more accommodating? It was difficult not to see a direct reference to our project, though, in her proposal that one ‘limit the damage’ one does by building.