Tanika Pimenta

Architecture is an active participant in the preservation of culture. It can either serve it or prevent it. This document aims to investigate the role of Architecture in the preservation and reinterpretation of Lusophone cultural identity in the South African context, with a focused examination on the suburb of La Rochelle, Johannesburg. La Rochelle has been the epicentre of Portuguese-speaking migration from the early 1930s to the present day, with changing demographics fostering centuries of tradition in food, dance, music, craft and regionalism. The core of this study lies in the conceptual interpretation of ‘Dialect’. The definition extends beyond the variation of spoken language and is instead explored as a cultural mode of exchange between Lusophone peoples. Through four main branches of dialect: language, food, dance, and making, this approach challenges preservation as mere sentimentality, instead, positioning it as a framework for the adaptation of an existing Portuguese club in La Rochelle, named Nucleo De Arte E Cultura. 

The adaptation will result in a cultural sanctuary, providing a place of familial belonging to the Portuguese-speaking migrants of La Rochelle. This sanctuary will be conceptually designed through the analysis of the four main branches of dialect, the architectural analysis of Portuguese critical regionalism and its adaptations across Lusophone countries. This is achieved through historical analysis, photographic studies and mappings, offering a framework that would contribute to architectural discourse and the style of Dialectical Regionalism. The resulting design proposal would take the form of a sanctuary, offering programmes such as a language school teaching Portuguese, Shangaan, and other Lusophone dialects, a food exchange school, performance spaces and studios, the existing programme of venue hire, renovating the existing sports field and facilities, providing adequate living quarters for the caretakers and a making studio which would teach and preserve the art of pottery, Azulejo( (tile) making as well as traditional embroidery. Rather than a static archive, the proposal will play an active role in preserving Lusophone Identity in La Rochelle.