Investigating youth's identity and its contribution to built form: a proposal for a youth orientated lifestyle centre for Kokstad.

Abstract

Youth’s identity is an important developmental process of a young person’s life. The nature in which this takes place today is one which opens the door to an architectural intervention that has the potential to both facilitate and improve this process. This study looks, in detail, at the metaphoric representation of the ‘streets’ as the current place where the youth spend their time developing and testing their identity. The research focuses specifically on the youth in a town called Kokstad, on the southern border of Kwa-Zulu Natal, as a case specific application of this idea to ultimately lead into the design of a youth-orientated Lifestyle Centre for Kokstad; A design that articulates how youth’s identity can impact architecture in a manner that then benefits youth’s identity development. Simply stated, the intention is to inform an architecture that responds to the youth’s identity; reanimating the essence of the ‘streets’ through architecture.