Abstract:

The historic second power station, located on the edge of the Bloemfontein CBD, stands as a physical embodiment of the apartheid-era spatial planning system that violently restructured cities across South Africa. At the hands of incessant monuments such as these, they serve as a permanent reminder of a generational phenomenon of pain, suffering and anguish. In response, they have often become targets of public outrage, frequently resulting in their defacement, destruction, or removal. Owing to this harsh reality, the question of preservation manifests as both an urgent and unavoidable debate. This project seeks to critically engage with this question, proposing an alternative, non-linear approach to heritage preservation that moves beyond unilateral notions of either restoration or erasure: Juxta-Poiesis. Instead, it aims to explore the possibility of coexistence, one that acknowledges the past without perpetuating the ideologies that once gave these structures power.