Gerald Phiri

South Africa faces a pandemic of gender-based violence (GBV), where statistics reveal that a woman is raped every twelve minutes and approximately eighty-six individuals are murdered each day. This violence spreads like a cultural virus that is normalised within neglected and abandoned urban spaces where it festers and proliferates. Among the most affected are sex workers, who remain criminalised, stigmatised and excluded spatially from the urban fabric. Left unchallenged, this marginalisation strengthens the culture and the viral reproduction of GBV. Within this context, this dissertation positions architecture as a vaccine against this violence, neglect and erasure by means of  spatial justice. The chosen site is Pullinger Kop Park in Berea, Johannesburg. An unsafe, very steep and mostly unusable open public space embedded in a dense high-rise district. This site is reimagined and reclaimed as a place of care, solidarity and transformation. At the heart of the design lies the “sanctuary loop,” a spatial framework composed of three interdependent programmatic zones which are refuge, empowerment and healing. The intervention is further guided by green infrastructure, strengthened connectivity and the integration of trauma-informed and biophilic design principles. It draws from defensible space theory to promote safety and incorporates cooperative economic models inspired by local stokvel practices. Through the transformation of Pullinger Kop Park, the project demonstrates that healing can be spatial, justice can be intentionally designed and GBV can be resisted through the creation of inclusive, protective and dignified public spaces. This sanctuary does not collapse into moral policing, instead it becomes spatial reparations that embrace the complexities of the lived human realities by refusing exclusionary purity. Should sex work continue to be a part of the residents lives then this sanctuary will offer dignity, inclusion  and protection without judgement, creating an urban design proposition that, empowers and heals regardless.