• • 19 July 2016
  • 
  •  Jaco Jonker
• Opinion , Faculty Years , Articles Books & Magazines , Art , Selected Works ,

Book 01:
When you tell a story, there are three important questions which determines how the story influences both the teller, and the audience. “The first, and least important question is: “What story are you telling”?” The far more important questions are: “How are you telling the story”? And lastly “Why are you telling the story”?

I believe we have, to a large extent, lost the art of telling a story, because we have misplaced our reasons for telling stories - the ever absent “why” of our narratives has become warped. I have found myself throughout my academic career in pursuit of this “why”, and I believe I am still in the process of finding it.

We do not (or should not) tell stories for critical acclaim, public recognition, or the search for a fleeting moment of the eternal in our very temporary lives. I believe we tell stories because we want to share a small part of our deepest spiritual self with another, and in doing so, we open up the doors for new realities and narratives between ourselves and our audiences. “This is the reason I have chosen to tell a story, for my final year in Architectural education - to share a deep part of my own knowledge and self, and in doing so, opening up the doors to a shared New Reality.

"The following important question is the “how?”." Throughout my life I have been influenced by the graphical medium of traditional Comic art, as well as the literary counterpart of fictional scientific narratives set in the alternative realities of the frontiers of the larger universe (commonly known as Sci-Fi). I have over the past 5 years in studying architecture explored how novels in the form of comic strips can serve as a fundamental tool of complete accessibility between the mind of the architect and that of the reader.

But it can become more than that- it becomes the basis for a tool of further interaction between people. "The issue of the “what” then only remains - what do I tell? Do I tell a story of reality, or a story of fiction? Or a story set in-between? I chose the latter. "This is where I drew inspiration from a Novel which has influenced my life greatly, titled Dune which was written by Frank Herbert in 1965. I have always been fascinated by the idea of exploring the final frontier of the universe we live in, and what that would or could mean for our current understanding of the dynamics of ecology, society, culture, politics, and scientific progress.

Herbert imagined a planet (Dune), which has over time, become a dessert planet due to the actions of early human civilizations. Water, or rather the lack thereof, presents one of the greatest challenges. People had to construct large-scale vertical walls of fine “nets”, to capture latent water from the atmosphere - however these nets were always prone to be destroyed by the sandstorms which frequently passed on this planet.

In this book, the notion of terraforming inhospitable planets to become more habitable is explored fictionally. Realistically, however, many scientists realized over time that terraforming larger and smaller areas of our planet is actually very real and could be empirically studied. " is occurs due to very small changes we have made either consciously or accidentally - the introduction of a new plant or animal species, the building of a dam, cutting down a grove of trees, or even small-scale agricultural activities.

How this works is described by the laws of cause and effect - leading, through knock-on mechanisms, to larger causes and hence larger effects. It is a natural phenomenon in existence all around us. "These small-scale changes can also be vastly poignant in contexts teetering on a “tipping-point” - a point where a small action can push a balanced system to extreme shifts in the “either/or” direction - either to the advantage, or the detriment of species within the system, but always significant.

My thesis project takes inspiration from this concept of terraforming both larger and intimate scales of quasi-urban environments close to a tipping point. I imagined, and found, our own real tipping-point mechanism within the context of the historical gold mining strip of Johannesburg. When at first I saw it, I realized it was in front of everybody, and no-one seemed to realize just how close we were to being pushed in the either/or direction.

But what direction would that be? And more importantly, could we guide these immense forces from that tipping point to the scenario beneficial to our daily lives, communities, and societies at large - to a better life, if you will?

Or would we be pushed to the other end? ... "This is why I wished to tell the story.

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