McBride’s thesis, entitled ‘The Queer Commons: Interweaving Queer Space into Hillbrow as an Urban Resource for Johannesburg’s LGBTIQ Community’, is a speculative architectural intervention that proposes a site of civic engagement to offer assistance to the growing social and psychological needs of Johannesburg’s LGBTIQ community.

Transformation of the inner city over the decades has had a profound effect on the social context of its queer community which has, in turn, also exposed its internal divisions. This proposal interweaves existing aspirations for the activation of the Windybrow Centre in Hillbrow with a new ‘Queer Commons’ that negotiates between much-needed structures of civic engagement in the area, as well as comprising an urban resource for Johannesburg’s LGBTIQ community.