Skye O’Connor
Nelson Mandela University
why did you choose to study architecture?
I came to architecture as an idea before I understood it as a profession. Initially, I was drawn to the notion of having creative freedom and influence, shaped as much by imagination as by films like Inception. While my understanding of architecture was limited, I became deeply intrigued by its ability to translate ideas from mind to hand, to building. What began as an interest in making, gradually evolved into an awareness of architecture’s capacity to shape experience, memory, and meaning. This understanding led me to see architecture as a physical form of art, one capable of creating meaningful impact through the articulation of form and space.
PROJECT
The Design of a Museum for Colonial Artefacts in Central, Gqeberha
PROJECT SUMMARY
Colonial statues, facades, and institutional architecture remain firmly present in the city, while the histories they impose, and the lives they have displaced, linger in absence. These objects do not simply recall the past; they continue to argue for it.
From this tension emerges a design for colonial artefacts that refuses neutrality, celebration, and closure. Rather than erasing these contested forms, or allowing them to dominate civic spaces unchallenged, the project relocates them into a deliberately confrontational architectural condition, one that exposes their ideological weight and historical violence.
An architectural non-object that privileges memory over form, experience over enclosure, and critical encounter over resolution. It does not seek reconciliation through form but reckoning through space.