Sub-City is a homage to our fascination with abandoned electrical substations in South Africa. They dot apartheid-era buffer zones, relics of an era of selective electrification. Most were built in the last midcentury, and sized for equipment that rapidly shrunk akin to Moore’s Law in semiconductors. We asked, what if these structures could shift from a past role as electrical transformers, to a new role as social transformers? Sub-city is ambitiously spatial, and proposes that these acupunctural interventions send shockwaves of measurable impact to their immediate communities.

The prototype project tackled a burnt-out substation adjacent to a social housing community in Eldorado Park, a suburb of Soweto. We proposed that a new library and community hub, dubbed ‘Lantern House’ could refocus a light on a forgotten corner of a forgotten neighborhood. At 34m2 the original substation was too small for a wide and welcoming community. Expansion of the footprint became possible using mass timber, which could grow arboreally out of the original brick structure. Lantern House literally emerges from the ashes of a substation to three storeys, with a roof terrace offering a new perspective over Soweto.

Although towering at a birds-eye view, up-close, Lantern House becomes the social transformer in a newly-programmed community plaza, connecting the social housing community to one another, and to the broader context. At ground level, a flexible maker’s space spills into a new amphitheater. At first floor, one wall of the digital learning wing is an outward facing projection screen, animating the park beyond.