bollards and batteries

we arrived at kwa thema just before lunchtime. it seemed strange to come empty handed – in comparison to yesterday - but we had left some supplies at mr cindy’s house so we had all we needed. we were still guarding the rotary drill, lent to us by fischer, with our lives so it went everywhere we went!

the anc volunteers were gathered around the central space and as we approached, we spotted 82 second-hand tyres that they had very diligently hauled to the site. we were overwhelmed by the quantity! as we began to mark the positions of the tyre bollards, we realized that the entire area where we had imagined them to go was in fact tarred! this would mean a huge amount of labour-intensive digging. and so we amended our previous bollard conceptions to suit the hard conditions. the tyres are to be stacked, 3 high, and filled with site rubble, which we had imagined would never be entirely removed in time for the launch. the tyre towers are then going to be painted and planted with a grass top.

drilling for the balusters commenced and after many-a-change-of-battery, gareth stepped down from the ladder just after 2pm. after a cheap russian roll and chips from lizzy’s catering, we once again reviewed hannah’s suggestions. we consulted mr cindy and stan about our revised ideas for the balustrade – their supposed non-understanding about our intentions led to their response, “i think it’ll be fine.”

we walked out to the north of the building, tip-toeing around rubbish, to examine the concrete slabs around the structure. gareth, catherine and guy passed some time in the central space, kicking tyres about – the noise echoed and clouds of dust mushroomed.

following sab’s reluctance to associate their beer crates with children, we decided to pursue the softdrink crate route. the crates are in fact more transparent and as a result will make a far less definitive screen. the next step of course, is to acquire 130 of them!

we left the site after hanging some mattress springs from one of the column bays, just north off the central space. the 3-dimensional quality of the springs was beautiful – the light and shadows esoteric. they coils framed the views. we decided we would erect 2 more in the upper bays and let them sway in the gusts of our blustery site.

children gathered to watch the tyre towers being assembled by the volunteers. they perched on the concrete slab with their milk-bottle push cars beside them. we gathered our belongings and headed to the car.

in the park south of the library, we spotted some kite fliers and stopped. the wind was belting. the wool cords taught and the danger-tape tails swooshing around furiously. catherine approached them and explained our saturday kite-making workshop. they said they would be there. and again we began the torturous journey to johannesburg – the sun setting below the extent of our sun-visors, our hands filthy and eyes heavy.

The Construction Worker

Yesterday when I arrived on site the only thing that went through my mind was where is the nearest spade and gloves because yesterday I was a construction worker.
Benjamin 'the builder' didn't come back to the chess park site after we offered him R2500. He is a mercenary. He came here to get money meanwhile I came here to build because yesterday I was a construction worker.
2 weeks ago we (chess park team) went to Kwathema Cashbuild. I stared with interest at the lady cashier and she also stared at me with interest. Yesterday when we went to Cashbuild, the same lady saw me and she looked away with disgust. At first I didn't understand then I remembered that my hair was brown and I was soiled from the knees down because yesterday I was a construction worker.
After being dropped off at Wits at the end of the day, as I was walking to res I walked past a friend I've known since 2005. When he saw me coming he looked away and pretended as if he didn't see me because yesterday I was a construction worker.
I've never showered before going to sleep at night, I always shower in the morning. Yesterday I considered showering before getting in bed but I was too tired to do this. Thank goodness I don't have white bed sheets.
If you are considering volunteering and joining our team at the Chess Park site, be prepared for minor changes in your life.

A New Idea

We went to Kwa Thema today, after our Construction lecture. We have been thinking about Hannah’s design direction, and might have come up with some interesting ideas. We were really tired today. The ANCYL guys had managed to clear away the entire west facade, and had moved around 80 tyres to the site from somewhere quite far away. The line along which we planned to sink vertical tyres, to form a road edge, is completely tarred, right up to the beer hall. Sinking our tyres would not work. So we were flexible and immediately thought of a wonderful solution, together with the ANC YL guys. Stack 3 tyres above one another, tie them together, fill them with bricks and rubble and top with grass. These bollards were almost all completed by the end of the day, and they look great! Gareth managed to finish drilling the top holes for the balustrade.

I managed to organise a skip for the next few days, hopefully it will help us in the removal in the massive dump next to the beer hall. We also tried to sort out our trees and spent some time keeping Mr. Cindi up to date, he mentioned that Eric, a man who we thought occupied the site actually lives three houses down. A burned out mattress emerged from the rubbish heap, and many options for it suddenly sprang to mind. This process is incredible, so many contrasts, so many agendas, some provocation, so many solutions.

Design-build projects end in tears

We decided at our Sunday afternoon meeting not to accept a possible SAB donation and to reduce our programme so that we were working within the original R10 000 budget, as intended. (Hannah had said last week that we should not be exploiting our connections for donations, but rather using township tactics to work with limited resources, despite her – then very confusing - Fischer introduction.) The SAB donation represented a possible R15 000 (though it wasn’t confirmed) but would have been slow in coming and would have involved other forms of assessment than the application form I’d filled in and sent to my friend at SAB’s CSI department. (I did establish that SAB would be open to applications for funding of the research report work in KwaThema in the second semester.) This means waving goodbye to the slide and the jungle gym, but perhaps this is an advantage as our programming becomes somewhat less circumscribed to the realm of children. We are going to try to focus on some more ephemeral interventions such as inscribing the names of all participants on the structure, painting lines through the building which relate to the original Calderian modernist planning principles, incorporating the mattress springs we’ve found, linking the building to the landscape more strongly, etc, but are adamant that the balustrade should be erected. The steel already in hand cannot really be repurposed and we feel it is an important – nonetheless not irrevocable – intervention that opens up possibilities for the use of the beerhall at this particular point in time. To Hannah, it seems our choice not to fundamentally redesign out intervention unfortunately represents a cold completion of our plans to be followed by a withdrawal from engagement in which we will simply abandon issues to sort themselves out.
Anyway, accordingly, we met on Monday morning in the workshop to drill our C-sections. Peter Kelsey, who seemed to have warmed to us slightly despite his warnings that all design-build projects end in tears, got us organised into a very efficient production line and the work was completed much more quickly than expected. We then loaded up the car with our borrowed drill and surveying equipment from Guy’s dad, and with a ladder over our laps in the back seat, we headed off to KwaThema – it was almost lucky that Khula was out of contact again as he wouldn’t have fitted! Marking out the levels was a tricky process, using one of the C-sections, a spirit level and Guy’s beeping laser level, and with Gareth marking the spot of the upper bolt with the drill. Unfortunately when it came to drilling the holes properly, the battery gave out quite quickly. So we returned today (Tuesday) and completed the process. Now we are ready to start installing the uprights on Thursday.

Site Work

We arrived on site in KwaThema at about 10h00 and continued were we left of yesterday with the drilling. The batteries of the drill we borrowed from Richard at Fischer were not helpful in speeding up this process as we could only drill approximately 8 holes before the battery would die- this meant that we had to wait about twenty minutes for the battery to charge.

During one of these battery charging ‘breaks’, Robyn and I decided to grab a bite to eat at Lizzy’s restaurant (just a few meters from the beerhall). The food was great and dirt-cheap and it wasn’t long before we had full stomachs and were ready to collect the battery to start drilling again.

While I finished drilling the final holes in the concrete, Catherine, Guy and Robyn worked with some of the guys from the ANC youth league making tyre bollards. They came up with a really great design using the tectonic of the tyres that exists in KwaThema. Using 3 tyres tied together using wire and then filling them up with soil and bricks to weight them down they achieved a very practical solution for protecting the occupants of the beerhall from erratic drivers who use this piece of road.

leaps and bounds

we spent the morning in the workshop, drilling. it seemed to go much faster than we had expected – we felt so positive! we created the perfect production line, so efficient, so intense and silently productive. catherine fetching a section from the table in front, measuring, scoring, measuring and scoring; guy collecting the steel from the same table in front, positioning it on the smaller drill press, drilling the pilot holes, flipping it over and drilling 2 more; me collecting the drilled baluster, carrying it to gareth at the larger drill press, lacing the pilot holes with cutting paste, gareth drilling the 13mm holes, flipping it over and drilling the other 2, me dusting off the shavings and carrying it to the ready-to-go stack and then to the quickly diminishing pile to replenish catherine’s stock on the table in front…

we left for kwa thema just after 10am and arrived on site to find our anc youth league team hard at work. they have been so fantastic and so surprisingly willing and enthusiastic. i cant believe that a group of young guys would be so keen to work so hard for no reward at all – other than the obvious reward of giving back to their community and in turn creating a space that they can have a little ownership over of course! we always give them a little to eat and drink which i guess makes it all a little more worth their while.

the site was looking so clean and just as we had always romantically pictured it. stark, hard, brutal and sparkling! we all felt so good. we had arrived with a car full of tools and equipment and knew that we were going to take big leaps today.

while the anc guys cleaned, we began the measuring process for our balustrade. guy had arranged an automatic leveling machine from his father, so he set it up, found a datum and began the leveling. again, we were surprised by how smoothly everything went – the marking was complete in an hour. the drilling was less successful as the batteries for the drill were not charged, but we left the site feeling as though we had accomplished a huge task.

the germans and hannah arrived while we were drilling – we were uncertain as to how they would react considering their responses to our design last week and hannah’s huge concerns for the re-thinking of our intentions. we seem to be rather defensive and reluctant to change, but in fairness to us, it seems as though our dreams for the project may not be entirely realized – we felt very disheartened and demoralized. we left the site feeling low again. the drive back was emotional and heavy.

Levels and Lizzy

This morning we all met at Wits really early to start drilling holes in our steel balustrade uprights. Mr Kelsey, the workshop manager was very quick to warn us of the problems associated with design and builds, but I think he respected our work ethic and softened his demeanour to hand us some invaluable advice. We assembled a production line, with Catherine marking out the holes on the steel, I drilled pilot holes in the c-sections and then Gareth drilled the final 13mm holes. Robyn helped Gareth and made sure the process ran smoothly – and it did, we were finished with our 40 odd steel uprights in less than 2.5 hrs. We then packed up and sped off to Kwa Thema.

Our ANC Youth League assistants have been working on the west side’s rubble pile while we were in the architecture school’s workshop. They had really made some headway into the clearance of the rubbish around the structure. It’s beginning to look fantastic. We had no time to waste, so began setting out the holes for the balustrade uprights. My father, a land surveyor, had lent us a laser level which helped us immensely. In no time the bolts were marked out. Gareth then started edging his way around the structure with the heavy duty drill which Fischer lent us. He had a great number of problems with the drills batteries not being charged enough. Robyn and I visited Dennis, the headmaster of Sakhelwe Primary School, just down the road. He was more than enthusiastic about supplying children for our waste paper recycling drive, the abacus / kite workshop and the collection of beer bottle tops. We are also very excited about their award winning choir, which will now be performing at the launch.

Catherine and I had already purchased some lunch snacks for our group, and after a short break it was back to work again. Hannah, Bernt and Christopher arrived a bit later. We were anticipating their arrival with some reserve, we weren’t sure what kind of dialogue we would have, what it would include and what angle it would come from. Our group had a successful talk with Hannah. We have been having some strong fears about the project, and how late in the game it was being rethought. This was dealt with sufficiently, and I left the chat feeling as though all was achievable, malleable and includable. The fluid, reactive design or in this case, redesign process which Hannah now advocates is something quite exciting, and I’m happy to confront it – I think we all are, just perhaps more rationally. At the end of the day, the reason the community is on our side, and is working so hard with us, is because they all have a vested interest in the success of this place. Everyone has an idea of what it could be, and I’m sure envisions their idea implemented in the not too distant future. We have given them an image of what we will create and the beer hall group feels strongly about supplying that vision in a complete form. The new ideas which have been communicated to us can definitely be accommodated, in a more ethereal, event based way.

I spent a part of the late afternoon interviewing Lizzy, in her take away shop around the corner. She is not a Kwa Thema resident, but saw an opportunity in opening a business in the township. She’s an extremely helpful, happy woman, who seems to be very excited about the beer hall. She saw it becoming a shopping centre.

I find it amazing how a structurally suspect, historically important skeleton like the beer hall can provoke such a creative response from its onlookers. The structure is a bare statement, a provocation to the community. I am a frame – make me something that benefits you (although I might fall down in ten years if you don’t fix me first).

Interview Sound Clips:

http://web.omnidrive.com/APIServer/public/z6wuGYW3nhTkLJbpd8agz2yP

Lizzy Dubeko Part 1

Lizzy Dubeko Part 2

ANC Youth League discussion