Slovo Park at a Glance

Slovo Park is situated in a politically and socially sensitive stretch of land south of Soweto. The community has been known by national government as Nancefield, by local council as Olifantsvlei and in the last five years as Slovo Park – named in honour of South Africa’s first minister of housing and former Umkhonto we Sizwe General, Joe Slovo.

The forced changing of identity reflects an on-going struggle faced by the leadership of Slovo Park to gain recognition as a legitimate settlement to access governmental support. This battle has been fought through constant shifts in governmental policy, power and promises for the community of Slovo Park. Their only tactics comprising of service delivery protest, painstaking formal requests for upgrade and currently a lawsuit against the City of Johannesburg.

Currently the community of Slovo Park with its development partners are strategizing this key social and political move.


THIS SITE SERVES AS A PORTAL FOR THE COMMUNITY OF SLOVO PARK & THE VARIOUS DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS TO SHARE THE JOURNEY OF RE-DEVELOPMENT.


NEWSFEED



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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

DAY 1: Shuttering Up

Monday morning...

Our overly excited spirits and great enthusiasm was greeted by gloomy weather.Due to these unforseen weather circumstances ,we were unable to commence work on site.However that did not stop us, due to our limited time available to complete this project we began work at FADA ( University of Johannesburg).

All the students gathering to discuss the plan for the day.
Photo by Megan Wilson

The Shuttering Team

And so cutting of the shutter boards began...
Photo by Lerato Botlhoko

                                     

The girls proving to have "some upper body" strength and so the roles were reversed...
Photo by Lerato Botlhoko

The Design Team

Meanwhile in the studio...the students were trying to come up with innovative ways to use recycled materials to aid the design.
Recycled botttles .
Photo by Megan Wilson


Trying out different ideas with the bottles.

Students arranging the bottles in various ways.





Day 0: Concept sketches design ideas


Concept of "Simulacra" an image or representation of someone or something by Wandile Mkhwanazi 


Concept of  "Learning through moving" by Rudelle Bezuidenhout

Concept of " A multi-functional playground for all members of the community" by Megan Wilson




Final collaborative design by chosen students.



Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Day -1: The Playground continues...



The Slovo Park Community Development Forum and 1:1 - Agency of Engagement's 1:1 - Student League  in collaboration with the University of Pretoria and the University of Johannesburg Second's year Architecture students have put together the Slovo Park Project 2013. The students developed their own brief based on six week research process.

The built output was for a brief to design a playground for the children of Slovo Park. - our main constraint was to design with ONE MATERIAL = CONCRETE!!!

A few of the students designs were chosen based mainly on the buildability considering that WE as the INEXPERIENCED LAPTOP-DRIVEN "UNSKILLED LABOURERS"  WERE GOING TO BE PHYSICALLY BUILDING IT!!

The selected students then came together to incorporate all three designs.Concept sketches of the designs to follow.

more to come soon....