Bite-sized history

01 July 2015 - 10:19 By Graham Wood

What seems like a brightly coloured miniature town has recently sprung up in Mosque Square, between Pigeon Square and Johannesburg Central Police Station in the Westgate Station Precinct near Newtown. The series of 1/25 scale architectural models are an orientation site for the Westgate Heritage Trail, one of the Johannesburg Development Agency's ongoing upgrades to the city's infrastructure and the public domain.The precinct, a significant transportation hub envisioned as a gateway to the inner city, has a surprising concentration of historically significant sites. They range from Ferreira's Camp, the spot where the first gold-mining camp on the Witwatersrand was pitched, to more recent sites significant in struggle history, such as Chancellor House, where Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo had their legal practice, and about half a dozen others.Information panels with photographs bring the multi-layered historical narrative of the area to life. But it can be difficult to find your bearings and navigate the trail.But the orientation sculpture, apart from attracting attention to the site with its bright candy colours and intriguing appearance, creates a logical departure point and an opportunity for visitors to get their bearings before venturing out, helping to render the history and the landscape navigable.Stewart Barstow of Library Special Projects, the research, architecture, curatorial and industrial design practice that designed the site, calls it "an intelligent mini town talking to the architecture and cultural heritage of the site". It fuses time and space, representing a historical narrative of the area, or "positioning history", as Barstow puts it.With its bird's-eye view, the site offers an overview of the trail in a single chunk of information and provides a friendly space in which to rehearse the walk. It also subtly sets the tone for visitors' engagement with the city. The colours suggest a playful, performative engagement with the city. History is not represented as something "towering over you". Rather, says Barstow, "There is something bite-sized about it."Another dimension of the design becomes apparent when you notice the blue icons borrowed from Google Maps, which mark the positions of important public artworks, such as The Shadow Boxer by Marco Cianfanelli. The archaic concept of the miniature village has been fused with what Barstow calls a "contemporary way of navigating space". In the language of its design, the past is brought into the present.Like all the best design, the Westgate Heritage Trail Orientation Sculpture does much more than its deceptively simple appearance suggests. As a representation of the city in the city, it enters into a dialogue with its surroundings, enriching the public domain beyond its 9m span. And through its own ingenious fusion of art and cartography, it becomes a place-maker, and an addition to the urban fabric itself...

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