Abstract

In the hollowed heart of Pretoria’s CBD, this project reawakens crafted nourishment as medicine through the adaptive reuse of 012 Central. The city faces disconnection, abandoned spaces, and limited access to alternative, holistic healthcare. Fast-food outlets and harmaceutical establishments dominate, offering quick fixes rather than long-term wellbeing. This creates a critical gap for nutrition-based healing spaces rooted in prevention, education, and community connection.

The project introduces an urban Healing Sanctuary, where architecture, plants, and people converge to restore body, mind, and spirit. Unlike conventional retreat-based centres that remove people from daily environments, this sanctuary integrates healing into everyday life, making it accessible, and inclusive. By remaining in the urban fabric, it challenges the notion that holistic healing requires physical separation, instead fostering daily, collective healing practices.

The theoretical framework combines craft theory, service design, and indigenous knowledge systems, supported by DIT research. Craft is understood as practice (developing skills), process (transforming materials), and product (tangible outcomes). Service design builds on this through activities, touchpoints, and atmospherics that shape meaningful experiences. Indigenous philosophies of circularity and reciprocity ensure sustainable, culturally rooted interventions.

The programme follows five healing journeys: cultivating plants in a medicinal garden, crafting remedies, preparing and sharing meals, engaging in guided consultations, and knowledge exchange through education and skill-building. 

Service providers—urban gardeners, herbalists, nutritional entrepreneurs, and healers—form the core user group, while students, city workers, and residents engage as visitors. Beyond its walls, the sanctuary partners with informal street vendors, fostering economic inclusion and extending healing into the public realm.

The design concept, “Craft as Healing,” applies three strategies: healing is layered (physical, sensory, and social layers overlap), healing involves human touch (crafted elements encourage connection), and healing is ongoing (flexible design supports growth). Spatially, the building flows from public to private, with a central atrium and branching staircase symbolising connection. Exposed structures and flexible layouts reveal cycles of making and healing. 

By uniting holistic health practices with urban regeneration, the project offers a living framework for accessible, daily healing, restoring both people and place through crafted nourishment

Keywords: Craft, Healing, Nature, Holistic, Collaboration