Steel boxes of the everyday: in search of the (extra) ordinary

With this in mind, the underlying notion of my thesis is that of the everyday and the extraordinary, and how within the ordinary, the (extra)ordinary may be revealed. A part of my personal everyday experience and one that is shared by many Capetonians traveling to and from the Cape Town CBO on a daily basis is the image and presence of the Cape Town Harbour which has become an everyday backdrop and like our majestic Table Mountain, often goes unnoticed. In particular, an aspect of my everyday harbour experience which stands out is the image of the shipping containers at the container terminal. When seen as individual objects, the shipping containers appear quite ordinary - a corrugated steel box. However, when combined and stacked vertically and positioned side by side, the multitude of colours an d configurations of the seemingly ordinary steel boxes begin to reveal intriguing forms and spatial qualities and I often found myself envisioning the spaces which may be revealed within and around the containers. With the notion of the shipping container as a spatial object of an ordinary, everyday nature, my architectural proposal intends to explore the making of an extraordinary space utilising these ordinary steel boxes of the everyday. As the shipping containers are standardised and modular, and therefore the space within the box is essentially a given, the focus of my thesis is not constrained to the space within the box, but instead it is more an investigation into the spatial qualities which can be created between and around the boxes and how one deals with the making of these (extra)ordinary spaces.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Goldblatt, Charl

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Noero, Jo
• Coetzer, Nic
• Steenkamp, Alta

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/5598

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/5598