Blank: Architecture, Apartheid and After Book

A compilation of over forty essays, both written and photographic, which seek to present the complexities of the built environment and the deep structures of divisive spatial planning in South Africa. It has been developed in response to a conceptual mapping of the terrain. The map begins to describe the architectural and the political landscape of South Africa by bringing a series of key positions into relationship with one another: invasions, community building, violence, house/icon, international tendency, 1960s, homelands policy, corrugated iron, fortification, weave, Promised Land, forced removals and planned divisions. Related concepts congregate around and abandon these positions to address one another across the spaces between. In approaching the built and written landscapes from these positions, an interplay of ideas and views is generated and the borders of diverse disciplines crossed. In this way Blank intends to contribute to an understanding of the difficult and divided spaces that will be one of apartheid's lasting legacies. The book contains original essays by prominent thinkers and practitioners in the fields of architecture, urban planning, politics, history, geography, sociology, philosophy, demography, anthropology and art criticism, and texts by novelists and journalists. It is illustrated with more than 250 archival images, and photographs by South African photographers specially engaged in this project. A set of double spreads conceived by artists completes this comprehensive description of an architecture that is largely unknown and unexplored.Read More