Supervisor: Christo van der Hoven
Departmental Research Field: Sustainable Material Innovation
Programme: Residency Craft & Skills Centre
Location: Botshabelo Mission Station Museum, Mpumalanga
Keywords: Ecology, Craft, Heritage, Ephemeral, Integral Sustainability
Abstract
Nestled in a valley of the Klein-Olifants River, the village of Botshabelo, meaning place of refuge, was founded in 1865 as a mission station for Reformed Christian converts seeking sanctuary. It developed into a self-sufficient settlement north of Middelburg, Mpumalanga, shaped by the fertile landscape and the cross-pollination of Bokoni and Bapedi indigenous knowledge systems with those of German missionaries. Many notable South Africans once called Botshabelo home, including conservationist Dr Hans Merensky, while artists such as Dan Rakgoathe and Gerard Sekoto honed their skills here. Under Apartheid, educational activities ceased, and the site was reduced to a museum and nature reserve. Following a successful land claim, the Botshabelo Community Development Trust now seeks to resettle their ancestral land while continuing museum operations, though the site has since fallen into disrepair. Guided by Mark DeKay’s Integral Sustainable Design paradigm, the proposal moves between inner worlds, where culture and experience take root, and outer systems of material, systems and behaviours that shape sustainable futures. The project forms part of a broader, living museum village where community members take shared ownership through skill, craft, and exchange with visitors, addressing the full spectrum of human needs beyond mere survival. Inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy, it fosters social connection, creative fulfilment, and spiritual growth as drivers for a meaningful life. The Classical order of the site’s built fabric is placed in dialogue with its Romantic ecological abundance. Activation along the main road edges through more intricate domestic crafts and exhibition spaces invites users to explore the rising undulations of the landscape, bound together in a communal square with stone and clay that anchor new timber workshops for ceramics and printmaking, as mediation between material practice and transcendent creativity.
Complementary programmes include material management, private and public workshops, residences, and visitor facilities, places where learning and making become shared acts. Local and regional materials are reshaped and reused through communal action binding past and present in a circular economy where rebirth and decay are embraced as natural rhythms of continuity, inviting users to experience their role in something larger through embodied engagement in the present.
