The Community Sundial

DAYLIGHT AS A MODE OF COMMUNITY BUILDING AND PROTESTING ANTI-HOMELESS ARCHITECTURE.

The Community Sundial serves as a point of connection in Johannesburg’s Central Business District. Located at Mary Fitzgerald Square, it is a reminder that architecture necessitates the participation of the people around it and that without inclusivity and accessibility, it strains an already fractured society. This project is a protest against anti-homeless architecture in South Africa. There are an estimated 200, 000 people living on the streets and the installation of spikes on any public surface on which a homeless person may seek refuge is a callous government response to the socioeconomic inequality in a post-Apartheid South Africa. The Community Sundial uses daylight as a unifying resource to create a non-discriminatory space for people to occupy. The decision to use daylight as the mode of unification is significant because it represents the human commonality of being drawn to light. The design is not only a work of social commentary. It considers what the community needs. More than 3 million South Africans do not have access to a clean water supply and so the sundial also functions as a rainwater harvesting system.