Paul Wilson

South Africa’s fractured healthcare landscape, where a world-class private sector serves just 16% of the population and the public system, overburdened and under strain struggles to care for the remaining 84% demands radical architectural solutions. 

This thesis proposes healing through a symbiotic relationship of a strategic Parktown property near Brenthurst and Parklane Private Hospitals. Transforming it into a catalytic public healthcare hub that bridges Johannesburg’s stark spatial and socioeconomic divides.

At the intersection of policy and design, the project rethinks healthcare infrastructure for South Africa’s NHI era by creating a healthcare   precinct where public and private facilities share resources while serving local communities. 

The design process and methodology challenges:

Architecture as social suture. A community-anchored facility where healing extends beyond clinical spaces to include public spaces, street-facing programs, and public areas that act as community junctions.

Symbiotic relationships in the Urban precinct.  Carefully understanding the current infrastructure of the precinct to preserve Parktown’s heritage while inserting a cutting-edge medical facility on the boarder of Hillbrow and Parktown as a melting pot of cultures. 

Precinct thinking. Strategic adjacencies with Brenthurst and Parklane Hospitals to enable shared diagnostics and specialist services, to better support the ideals of the NHI as a healthcare solution for South Africa.

 

Through spatial justice frameworks and global precedents from Mumbai to São Paulo, the thesis demonstrates how architecture can physically manifest NHI principles, turning a pragmatic infrastructure project into a beacon of equitable urban health. The resulting hybrid model offers replicable strategies for healthcare design in polarized cities throughout South Africa and worldwide, proving that hospitals can be both life-saving institutions and vital public spaces that knit divided communities back together.