AbstractsPolitical Science

This project seeks to explore the role of architecture in the design of the Home Affairs as a public government institution through establishing and revealing aspects of both multiple and national identity towards the users of the building (local and immigrant population). The architectural aim of this project is to redefine the regional office of Home Affairs in the inner-city of Johannesburg as a multi-national and cultural building which reveals dignity, integrity, diversity and citizenship. By rethinking the notion of the "public" and 'private" realm, the aim is to begin to blur these thresholds through concepts of transparency between the receiver of the service and the service provider, With the transition from the apartheid rule to the current "democratic" society, architecture is constantly used by government to reinforce the concept and ideology of democracy through projects such as the Constitutional Court and the Apartheid Museum. Though the Home Affairs is a government institution, its connection to issues of identity involving both nationals and foreign nationals suggests an approach which acknowledges multiple identities in a cosmopolitan city such as Johannesburg. In recent years, some government buildings which were symbolic in the previous political regime have simply been revamped and re-appropriated (Freschi, 2006).