Abstract

"The Belly of the Beast" explores what happens when a site built for secrecy and destruction breathes again. Six abandoned bunkers, the hidden core of South Africa’s nuclear weapons program, lie 16km west of Pretoria’s city square and 8km from Pelindaba. Born from fear and power, these bunkers later became something unexpected: the ground where South Africa chose to dismantle its arsenal, becoming the first nation in the world to renounce nuclear weapons voluntarily. This site marked the beginning of a path toward peace.

Yet today, this symbol of peace is at risk of being lost. The bunkers are being reclaimed by the Witwatersberg mountain range, crumbling into silence within a protected nature reserve. What once signified humanity’s ability to choose reconciliation now threatens to fade, pulling us back into cycles of forgetting and destruction. The project begins with an urgent question: how can we breathe life back into a site of peace so that its story continues to guide the future?

The design reimagines the Advena bunkers as a mythological archive, a labyrinth where stories, rituals, and voices take the place of warheads. Myths of Prometheus, Cassandra, Romulus and Remus, and the Phoenix structure the visitor’s journey through chambers of shadow and light, permanence and decay, repetition and renewal. 

Today these bunkers, reclaimed by the Witwatersberg mountain range, risk collapsing into silence. Yet in a world where nuclear fears resurface and cycles of violence persist, their story is urgent. The design transforms the site into a living archive of peace: a place where myths are retold, communities excluded from official histories can inscribe their voices, and artists in residence reimagine hope.

Each year on 10 June, the anniversary of the nuclear peace treaty, the Night of a Thousand Fires burns away unwanted stories, renewing the memory of a forgotten peace. The Peace Archive gathers what remains, turning the bunkers into a living monument where reconciliation is not fixed in stone, but continually made through ritual and voice.