Bong’s Inn, a cultural landmark in Macassar, has won University of Cape Town (UCT) PhD candidate, architect and lecturer Clint Abrahams the prestigious 2022 Social Responsiveness Award.
The award, established by UCT in 2009, honours work that contributes to the country’s cultural, economic, political, scientific and social landscape and also incorporates community service into UCT’s research, teaching and learning.
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The seven-year community-led project is a collaboration between members of the Macassar community, Abrahams, and his students in UCT’s School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics. It forms part of a larger initiative, namely the Macassar Storytelling Project.
Abrahams is the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment’s (EBE) first recipient of the award. ‘The award shines a light on Macassar’s community builders and is a fitting tribute to the late Thomas Adonis, Owen Amsterdam, Ali Edwards and Paul Swartz, whose self-made constructions have been the inspiration behind the build,’ he says.
Winner of the 2022 Social Responsiveness Award, Clint Abrahams, talks about the design-build project that brought a community, its history and stories to life. Read more: https://t.co/iVJxGKIA6N pic.twitter.com/v8IetTJRv3
— UCT (@UCT_news) August 1, 2023
The project is derived from his 2019/2020 UCT Creative Works award-winning street photography project, which was created with Macassar’s youth and John Coetzee, principal technical officer from the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics. The ‘Who We Are’ exhibition aimed to ‘alter the distorted mental image of the Macassar community’.
At the time, Bong’s Inn was one of the few places willing to accommodate the activities of the street photography project, representing a need for an established place to conduct ongoing storytelling.
Bong’s Inn was built by Rastafarian Joey Sampson (also known as Bong by locals) in the 1990s. The site served many purposes: a tavern, youth arcade, taxi depot, greengrocer, a venue for community events, and a space to host and plan storytelling workshops and photography exhibitions.
Although raised in Macassar, Abrahams says his work there didn’t start as an academic research project. ‘It was a call to action. I was in my community at the time when we needed to find a way to rebuild hope and trust.’
He says the project redefined his role as an architect and researcher in the built environment. According to UCT, local communities in Macassar were the focus of the project’s authors, instigators and Abrahams, who used his skills as an architect with writer Diana Ferrus to showcase the community-building potential of local spaces and to bring the storytelling place to life.
‘To make sustainable change, we must look inward. It takes insiders to tell meaningful narratives about a place and its people. And that’s the power of this project,’ he adds. ‘The refurbishment of Bong’s Inn is a marker in time that pays homage to community engagement and points to the possibilities when we commit to place and people. Thus, the project is as an important moment and part of a re-iterative process and an ongoing community engagement.’
In 2019, Abrahams collaborated with academics from RWTH Aachen University, Peter Behrens School of Architecture in Dusseldorf, Germany and Cape Peninsula University of Technology to mobilise 40 students from South Africa and Germany to work alongside locals to reshape Bong’s Inn. Abrahams says this was an opportunity to research and test the viability of local ideas and building techniques ‘in pursuit of a dignified place to accommodate the ongoing storytelling project.’
In 2021, the school was approached by the Peter Behrens School of Architecture to help rebuild the fire-damaged Langa community. Thanks to the collaborative efforts and teachings in Macassar, students and locals designed and rebuilt an acoustic ceiling and sound studio for the theatre.
‘The completion of the Langa project is a testament to how the collaborative relationships forged by the Bong’s Inn project continue to have long-lasting impacts beyond Macassar.’
He adds that pairing the students with community members was a valuable opportunity to explore the different ways of teaching, learning and curriculum transformation.
‘Here the aim is to meaningfully impact South African contexts through architectural making where students connect abstract thinking to the construction of buildings in a way that directly benefits communities.’
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Dr Philippa Tumubweinee, director of the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, notes the themes of social justice and transformation in Abrahams’ work. ‘The project responds to questions of social-spatial justice through a co-production process that promotes place-based evidence to explore curriculum reform and transformation. Beyond the impact that this project has had on the curriculum it has by foregrounding modes, methods, and approaches to building construction, Macassar generated a database that makes visible indigenous and localised knowledge that has previously been marginalised.’
The ongoing post-occupancy documentation of Bong’s Inn, as well as research outputs and several peer-reviewed articles on the project, has become a crucial resource for important research data for Abrahams’ doctoral thesis. ‘This explores interdisciplinary creative works as a relevant academic praxis to help show that situatedness can help redefine the definitions and roles of agents in local communities.’
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