MAPUNGUBWE INTERPRETATION CENTRE

The Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre

Peter Rich Architects

Mapungubwe National Park, Limpopo, South Africa 2009 analysis hand drawing

Made of local material and constructed by hand from the bottom up, the Interpretation Center took a lot of local effort and tectonic experimentation to create. I took the same approach when constructing my analysis model. I created and placed every stone and brick individually. Each brick during construction was pressed individually and placed in a certain orientation to ensure the vaults stood. With my model, I took the same approach with rotating each brick along the X, Y and Z axis to create that order and to properly study the reason these vaults stand.

An Etch-a-Sketch has more dynamic movement than you’d think. Imagine a child walking, carrying the board with their hand, creating a swinging motion. If that child wasn’t moving the object in a perfect parallel path from them, it would twist and roll. Writing with the pen, it moves all around, in my drawing I chose a zig zag pattern. With the points being darker because the pen would rest longer when the direction changes. Erasing the board is a movement, a slider is slide back and forth to clear the drawing. The slider is represented by vertical lines, and with similar logic, the lines are darker towards the base of the slider due to a more flimsy top of the slider. Admiring all these unique movements, created a drawing to balance and encompass all of these movements.