Thiresh Govender is an architect and urban designer practicing in Johannesburg. Having worked in the studios of Noero Wolff and Paragon Architects, he was driven to understand the larger forces shaping architecture and cities in our new democracy. He was awarded the Chevening Scholarship to complete his Master’s in Urban Design at the Bartlett in 2006. Following his intrepid travels to far-away places, he set up UrbanWorks in Johannesburg as a means of exploring the possibilities of practice in an attempt to understand this unwieldy metropolis in terms of its design. He is deeply obsessed with the emergent spatial patterns of the city, specifically its capacity to foster radical new possibilities. He leads Unit 14 at the University of Johannesburg’s Graduate School of Architecture, which investigates the Rogue Economies shaping Johannesburg.

In this performance, Bartlett doctoral student Thandi Loewenson will take the audience on a journey; from the fringes of the real, through the many realms of the weird and settling in a site that is decidedly tender. Through many voices, she will share how developing the story of a weird, fictional city called Mailo – through writing, drawing and performance – is enabling a community of waste pickers and the Lusaka City Council to work together towards producing a tender to manage the city dump site. Mailo is a test of the possibilities of an architectural interpretation of the literary genre of the New Weird; where politically engaged, urban, secondary world fictions are created which draw on real world models and combine elements of science fiction and fantasy.

GSA Unit 12: An African Almanac holds its reviews this September, in Maboneng Johannesburg, with invited guest critic Thandi Loewenson. M2 Reviews will be held on Tuesday 25th September from 09h30-12h00 at the gAP, Museum of African Design (Maboneng), and M1 Group Tutorials will be held on Wednesday 26th September from 10h00-12h45 at Fox street Studios (280 Fox Street, Maboneng). Be sure to swing by if you're in the neighbourhood!