Woudstra, R. orcid.org/0000-0002-5969-1972 and le Roux, H. orcid.org/0000-0003-1014-4318 (2022) “Build Your Own House”: Betty Spence’s design-research in 1950s South Africa. Architectural Theory Review, 26 (3). pp. 427-457. ISSN 1326-4826
Abstract
This article examines the design-research of the white, South African, left-wing, liberal architect Elizabeth “Betty” Spence (1919–84) during early spatial apartheid. Building on Spence’s fragmented archive of publications and interviews, we explore how she worked for and with disenfranchised Black township inhabitants on materializing alternative housing options. Spence’s approach included careful observation of how different inhabitants—particularly women—used interior spaces. While her work responded pragmatically to distinct South African social, economic, and racial challenges, this article shows that her design-research was indebted to both European design thinking on the optimization of domestic space and American-South African debates on “race relations.” Her concern with incremental housing, self-construction, and the process of building and homemaking in the townships, we argue, should be understood as a form of political action that enabled self-determination within the framework of modern urban life.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | Township housing; domestic spaces; apartheid; self-construction; Johannesburg |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Architecture (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Feb 2024 14:15 |
Last Modified: | 23 Feb 2024 14:15 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/13264826.2023.2181835 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209426 |
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