In KwaThema the main forms of spatial appropriation in open land include grazing cattle, planting mielies (corn), meeting churchgoers, car wash precincts, outdoor shebeens (drinking places), bashes (youth parties), wedding and funeral parties, and soccer. Lacking the resources to create permanence, emerging institutions are created in part from existing and appropriated space, in part from temporal infrastructures and in part from public cultures that rely on the intensity and memory of lived experiences.
My new research interest is soccer spaces. Working alongside three different soccer networks, I’ve developed a staged strategy to support the renewal of existing fields and opening up of new ones at a minimal cost. It begins with a visit from the Whitelineunit, volunteers from the Imvelo Youth Development brigade (part of the earlier KwaThema Project - see Design is a virus) who have skills and materials to establish a field anywhere, in the most fundamental manner using white paint onto earth and four goal markers, and the basics for field based meetings, in the form of a shade structure and a gas barbecue.
The second strategy involves locating fields and organizing their clean-up. In the process, there is a lot of discussion about the meaning and memories of place, and an energized imagining of what it could become. The third gesture involves the design and construction of a thickened edge to the fields, in the form of a paved strip, mobile shade structure and signs, using materials typical of temporary structures in the township. The final strategy is to allow the edge element to be added to by other actors, within and outside the township. These additional elements will be suspended or housed within its frame; coming both from within and outside of the local township economy they might include food stalls, signage, branding and VIP enclosures. The shade structure and field will act as a mediating filter between scales and networks around soccer, to illustrate ways to extend the space and program of soccer.
The social elements might include educational programs, political sloganeering, opportunities for business, networks of friends and transport arrangements all linked through minimal micro-technologies of temporary structures and services. The new proposals will engage with and propose a more multiple kind of pitch, in terms of its use. At an urban scale, the project can be multiplied using soccer pitches as a building block to enrich township public space.
