Red Location Museum
The Red Location Museum is a museum in the New Brighton township of Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
The museum was opened to the public on 10 November 2006 as a tribute to the struggle against Apartheid. It is situated in a shack settlement that is one of the oldest townships in Port Elizabeth.
The area once housed a Boer concentration camp, but the camp's residents were moved in 1900 when the site would become one of the first few urban settlements for Black people.
Architecture
The building was designed by Cape Town-based architect Jo Noero of Noero Architects. The concept was inspired by the literary work of German-born professor Andreas Huyssen, whose work focuses on the idea of memory and history. It challenges the traditional notions of museum design. Instead of being treated as mere consumers of information, as in the case of conventional museums, visitors are encouraged to actively participate in the experience and navigate through it as they please with no set path.Construction reportedly cost R22-million and the municipality was believed to be spending R300 000 a month on operating costs. Similar to the surrounding informal settlements, the museum is made of corrugated iron boxes that are 6 x 6 x 12 metres.
The museum houses an auditorium, library, art gallery, a memorial space honouring local heroes of the liberation struggle and offices. There were plans of erecting an adjoining tomb where struggle heroes Raymond Mhlaba and Govan Mbeki would be buried, but this was not seen to completion when the heroes’ families refused to have the bodies exhumed. The use of boxes was inspired by the boxes that migrant workers used to keep their treasured possessions when they were away from their families in rural areas.