Biography

Swayam Ramdass is a Mprof interior architecture student at the University of Pretoria. She obtained her undergraduate degree and honours degree in Interior Architecture from the same institution. Her current design research focus is Subjective Well-being and Neuroaesthetic Architecture to actively facilitate human flourishing. Her normative position is thus heavily based on a human-centered approach to design as she believes that design should always impact the user's lives holistically in a positive manner.

Discipline/s

Interior Architecture

Research description

A pilot project sharing the narratives of community members involved in various University of Pretoria student-led projects on their daily experiences and realities navigating their lives in vulnerable communities in the city of Tshwane.

The project aims to record the “voices” of community members, specifically but not limited to young people in peri-urban communities, substance users in a harm reduction programme, and previously street-based people living in shelters in the City of Tshwane. Participants will tell their stories, with the intention to a) better understand their lives, in order to b) positively influence policy and the implementations thereof, thus c) contributing to appropriate interventions, and d) raise awareness in order to overcome stigma and the resulting discrimination towards, especially, homeless people and people who use/d drugs (PWUD).