This edited collection looks at ruins and vacant buildings as part of
South Africa's oppressive history of colonialism and apartheid and ways
in which the past persists into the present
Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins: The Persistence of the Past in the
Architecture of Apartheid interrogates how, in the era of
decolonization, post-apartheid South Africa reckons with its past in
order to shape its future. Architects, historians, artists, social
anthropologists and urban planners seek answers in this book to complex
and unsettling questions around heritage, ruins and remembrance. What do
we do with hollow memorials and political architectural remnants? Which
should remain, which forgotten, and which dismantled? Are these vacant
buildings, cemeteries, statues, and derelict grounds able to serve as
inspiration in the fight against enduring racism and social neglect?
Should they become exemplary as spaces for restitution and justice? The
contributors examine the influence of public memory, planning and
activism on such anguished places of oppression, resistance and
defiance. Their focus on visible markers in the landscape to interrogate
our past will make readers reconsider these spaces, looking at their
landscape and history anew.
Through a series of 14 empirically grounded chapters and 48 images, the
contributors seek to understand how architecture contests or subverts
these persistent conditions in order to promote social justice, land
reclamation and urban rehabilitation. The decades following the
dismantling of apartheid are surveyed in light of contemporary heritage
projects, where building ruins and abandoned spaces are challenged and
renegotiated across the country to become sites of protest, inspiration
and anger.
This ground-breaking collection is an important resource for
professionals, academics and activists working in South Africa today.
