Urban Miscellanea
2020-2022, 2025
Urban Miscellanea is an experimental multimedia anthology that celebrates creativity situated within the urban.
2020/21: States of Apprehension
2021/22: Urban emergency / urban rhythms
2025: Archiving
Home
Scroll to top
Jhono Bennett2020/21
Spirit of the Order: Navigating the what-what
Website
Bio
Jhono Bennett is the co-founder of 1to1 - Agency of Engagement, a design-led social enterprise based in Johannesburg. 1to1 was initiated in 2010 in support of the multi-scalar work being done to re-develop post-Apartheid South African cities in the face of systemic spatial inequality.
Jhono is currently enrolled at the Bartlett School of Architecture as a doctoral candidate in the TACK / Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing network.
His practice-led research interests are driven by issues of inclusive design approaches, spatial justice, critical positionality, and urban planning in South African cities.
:jhonobennett
In reflection on ‘professional’ response to the emergency of the demolition of what the City of Joburg deemed to be simply an ‘informal settlement’ (which in reality is a complex social-spatial system over 500 homes and 1000s of intertwined lives): a crucial question on what role a spatial design practitioner takes in navigating these inter-scalar and positional agencies emerges and is centred in a blended urban studies/arts practice/architectural exercise of reflective research.
In acceptance of South Africa’s centuries of colonial and apartehdi socio-spatial segregation, one cannot be a neutral outsider to the legacy of inequality that remains present in everyday life and ‘professional practice’. This recognition requires deeper and more troubled acceptance into what support, complacency, and engagement mean in such work - most importantly their own personal relationships to spatial inequality in one’s own context.
This project is an early methodological attempt at developing a more positional and situated inquiry into navigating the what-what of such inter-personal, and inter-scalar complexity.