In Yeoville Studio 2011, Solam Mkhabela (an urban designer who uses photography as a tool to understand the city) built his photography course for second-year students in the architecture programme, in dialogue with Claire Benit-Gbaffou (a planner and Studio coordinator, who based her approach on the 2010 experience of a street photography interactive exhibition). This dialogue was stimulating and exciting, as Solam and Claire came from different perspectives, personal histories, academic disciplines and imaginations of the city, but shared a passion for Yeoville, for students, for the city and for walking the street. We chose to report part of this dialogue in this book, through the facilitation of Kirsten Dormann (an architect interested in multi-disciplinary dialogue), to give readers an idea of what goes into the fabric of a course, to reflect on the production of knowledge and its pedagogy, and to illustrate some of the processes that occurred, within the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits, during Yeoville Studio.

Personal

For the purposes of this reconstructed dialogue, Kirsten, as facilitator, asked Solam and Claire for an initial statement on their experiences of the street.

Solam

I am an urbanist. Ever since I left the rural area where I was born, 47 years ago, I have been fascinated by the city. Whether it was Ermelo, Piet Retief, or Barberton, it did not matter. It was the allure of the pace. The energy of the thriving streets, the numerous lives on the sidewalk. When I came to Joburg, it felt I had arrived at something that was simply difficult to describe. Even though apartheid was in full swing, and I was told to allow whites the right of way on the sidewalk, it didn't deter me from being captivated. The different glimpses you have of the diverse – in my case unaffordable – wares displayed in the windows were intoxicating. The sidewalk was an avenue to otherness, other layers, other realities. It offered a possibility for metamorphosis.