Scripted Architectures

How Spatial Configuration Fosters Ritualistic Behaviours

Thembalihle Basi

MArch 2022

Supervisors:
Unit Leader: Dickson Adu-Agyei
Unit Tutor: Veronica Chipwanya
Unit Assistant: Demi Bridgland

UNIT 20
Spectres of the Frame

This Major Design Project (MDP) aims to investigate the notion of architecture and scripting by examining architectural elements that foster certain human behaviours as well as decoding the hidden instructions that exist in particular spaces, how these relate to typology and how spaces might be re-scripted through the act of subversion, “a process by which the values and principles of a system in place are contradicted or reversed” (Webster, 1928).

The project first examines the scripting of the home which will them be used to subvert and thus re-script the site – Home Affairs. This site was chosen as it differs in typology to the home and is an example of the way that spatial configuration directs our movement as the movements on site are very controlled and deliberate. Thinking about the scripting of the home, the components that make it up, and the rituals performed in it, the project considers the following questions: what if rituals of the home as they relate to time established your identity at Home Affairs? The Proposition is that of a re-scripted Home Affairs where the site is subverted such that the movable architectures and rituals of the home are superimposed into the waiting spaces at Home Affairs - in which The Performance will occur. This re-scripting will form part of a code of conduct which expresses codes of behaviour as they relate to the reimagined architectures and spatial configuration of the site.

Keywords:
Self-Construct, Conduct Code, Ritual, Behaviour, Narrative, Subvert, Re-script