The Place of Culture in Architecture

Abstract

The Southern African country of Botswana is relatively young, having gained its independence from the British in 1966. The capital city, Gaborone, is relatively new, designed after the garden city models in 1963. A proud people, the Tswana are full of tradition in their ways. The culture dates back centuries. Many people do not call Gaborone home. It is just a place they happen to work in; home is in the village, for some over 800 km away. All seasonal festivities (Independence Day, Christmas and so on) are times for heading home to celebrate with the family. It is a time one uses to see the cattle at the cattle post and visit the lands to see how the crops and the small livestock are doing.

Yes, the pastoral culture still reigns supreme. A proud nation indeed, you come to the city and very little of the people is visible. The architecture has all the ideas the layman attributes to the west. The culture of the nation is nowhere to be found. Even the nation's kgotla, the House of Parliament, does not relate to the culture of such a proud people.

The thesis is an architectural research of how the Tswana culture can inform architecture. I have looked at the Tswana culture with particular attention to ways of public gathering and governance. The culture, though, is really found in the everyday events: for example, what happens in a typical dwelling and also in rituals like traditional dancing. The values learnt here culminate in the design of the new parliament building(s) in Gaborone. The point is not to transplant the village to the city, since this would not be fruitful; the idea is to learn the values and principles of the culture and apply them to the present setting. This is in essense a reading (an interpretation) of the culture for architectural design purposes. This thesis is undertaken in keeping with the fact that Botswana is a democratic country, and as such the ideas the building(s) portray relate to both tradition and democracy, and the two coexist.