Project Title: 

Project Location: Pretoria

Project Focus Area: Public Interest Design 

Supervisor(s): Dr Carin Combrinck

Project Description: 

Sharing the Cathedral (Dyal-Chand 2013) looks at sharing rather than exclusion as the preferred outcome of property disputes with the goal of navigating the issue of tenure in an informal settlement context. It aims to address the impasse between policy and implementation, providing an underprivileged community with access to education and healthcare through faith-based and NGO intervention. The project is situated within the theory of Public Interest Design; design that serves the public good. It seeks to provide the best of the best for the poorest of the poor, in this instance, the Plastic View informal settlement residents.

The project caters for the Plastic View informal settlement in Moreleta Park, which is home to roughly 15 000 residents, with about 1200 children between the ages of 0 and 6 years (Mohlomi 2020). The residents have no access to service delivery and the access to quality education is extremely limited due to geographical and financial limitations.

Building on existing initiatives within the community, I am proposing an educational precinct that will service these residents and the surrounding Moreleta Park community.

The precinct will be situated on an unused portion of the Moreleta Park church’s grounds, and will house: a school, providing daycare, occupational therapy services, as well as extra-curricular activities, a clinic, an urban agriculture facility and kitchen, and a multi-purpose community hall.

The precinct will cater for and be run by the SA Cares for Life NGO, the Pure Hope school, and the Moreleta Park church. No permanent structure is allowed to be built in the settlement, so the project looks to share the cathedral to aid an underprivileged community.