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A new habitual pattern that has risen in the 20th century is that of high-density, high-rise living. Primarily an answer to problems of density in inner-cities, these beehive environments provide the set for numerous patterns and rituals as it houses millions of modern city-dwellers.
The biggest of its kind in Africa is the 54 storey Ponte City, situated in Berea, Johannesburg. Its smooth cylindrical geometry occupies a notorious presence in the city skyline, complete with Vegas-like advertising on its curves. Borne from white yuppie up market visions in the early 1970’s, it has since become a charismatic icon of Johannesburg’s inner city, and a model of urban transition in a high rise environment of the most densely populated areas in the world.
All of Joburg knows this visual reality, and everybody is somehow familiar with some of its history, its stories, its fears and its darkness. Some has heard about rubbish piling up in the core, some speculate about the numerous amounts of suicides committed from the top, and for its current diverse population of mainly African immigrants it simply shapes their reality of pure daily routine. Ponte is magically draped in an invisible layer of urban myth. This uncanny city also defines an architecture of mental space providing for texture and flavor in an almost cinematographic experience of the city.
How does such a bewildering environment operate and how does it provide a home? This study intends to investigate and map various systems within the building and its milieu. These include visual culture, identity and identity-crises, social networks as well as private ritual. Visual and theoretical techniques of montage and superimposition will be utilized to expose these invisible orders in order to provide new meaning in a seemingly anonymous beehive. Ultimately, ways of understanding and discarding homelessness and creating hope will be sought to re-imagine these unique and fantastic environments.
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