Thinc

Build a nation one visit at a time

The Freedom Park is a national heritage site, memorial and museum dedicated to those who lost their lives in the struggle for freedom in South Africa. It's a new kind of institution, drawing on the diverse cultural resources of its public and on the power of storytelling to recount the achievements and pain of the nation's past. Storytelling becomes story-making: a way to build a new national narrative of healing and reconciliation.

International Advisor and Planner,

in partnership with Visual Acuity

150-acre site, 70,000-square-foot Memorial, 60,000-square-foot Museum

Opening in phases through 2009

The project, the first phase of which will open in the spring of 2008, is a 150-acre heritage park featuring a memorial (at center) and a museum, to be built at the northern edge of the site.

Thinc and Visual Acuity have participated in consultative meetings over a period of four years with more than 20 groups representing different sectors of South African society, including indigenous communities, historians, artists, and government officials.

Sikhumbuto, the memorial and meeting place.

The Wall of Names memorializes those who died in eight conflict events in South African history.

The spiral path leading to Sikhumbuto and the Wall of Names.

Isivivane, symbolic resting place of the fallen.

Moshate, the presidential reception complex. Prior to the opening of //hapo (the museum that will complete the project), Moshate will serve as an entrance plaza with amenities for visitors.

The proposed musem, //hapo, is designed around a paradigm of storytelling that involves traditional African techniques, objects, and multimedia. When not in use, storytelling areas function as gallery spaces.

A number of gallery spaces will use spare arrays of artifacts and imagery to build a social-historical context through first-person narrative. Many people who visit the museum will have first-hand experience of the apartheid era and the first years of democracy in South Africa; the museum will offer opportunities for visitors to donate oral histories, as well as physical and digital objects, which, taken together, comprise the "living archive" of South African memory.