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ARCHITECTURE
JOURNAL OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS
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JOURNAL OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS
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EMERGING ARCHITECTS
JULY/AUGUST 2011
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YOUNG
AND OLD
Julian Cooke
THE IDEA OF PUBLISHING the work of ‘emerging architects’
comes from the Architectural Review award programme for young
practitioners (December 2009), which evoked some really fine
pieces of work, such as the Bridge School in China, as well as a few
wrong-headed ones. As the editors commented, it was surprising,
in view of so much of the architecture being published nowadays,
that there was comparatively little individualistic formalism and
a number of the projects are environmentally sensitive and/or
socially orientated.
A call for contributions of emerging architects here (not
a competitive one) produced almost as wide a range of work:
from the stylish, up-to-the-minute House Hare to the handmade
assemblage of reused materials in House Ribiero. What is
pleasing about the former is that it does not share the muteness
or arbitrariness of so many of its international relations, but its
crisply defined form, materials, openings and appendages are
meaningful both internally and contextually. And in the latter,
the determination to work in a fully sustainable way, including
the use of the project to train unskilled people, has not produced
a technically-dominant solution – as is so often the case – but has
generated a complete work of architecture, connected closely with
the landscape. Thiresh Govender’s submission sets out a third and
particularly encouraging position, with an emphasis on city-making
and a collage method. Other submissions, some of which will be
published in future editions, show similarly promising approaches:
to convert malfunctioning, out-of-date buildings into spaces which
are appropriate to their climatic and urban context, and which suit
a contemporary style of life and tackle the difficult demands of the
speculative developer.
In the other half of this issue, Paul Kotze makes a strong
argument for using competitions in order to elicit work of quality,
and backs it up by illustrating five excellent submissions to the
competition to extend the John Moffat building of the architectural
school at Wits. It makes one think how stimulating it would be for
the architectural profession, and how positive for South African
cities, if all public buildings were made the subject of competition
in terms of design. Instead of the current situation where
architects and urban designers must compete in terms of previous
experience and fees, which is a sure route to mediocre design,
it would generate all the energy and skill among young (and old)
architects lurking in the background, bring their ideas into the
public arena and create a lively climate for discussion and debate
about the built environment.
In this issue is Alan Lipman’s last ‘End Piece’. He was writing
articles, such as on the topic of neo-plasticism, in the South
African Architectural Record, which was the ancestor of this
journal, 60 years ago. We congratulate and thank him for his
untiring and vigorous commitment, and wish him very well in
his – no doubt lively – retirement.
Associate Publisher
Jocelyne Bayer
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
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CONTENTS
EDITOR’S NOTE
01 YOUNG AND OLD
By Julian Cooke
NOTES AND NEWS
05 OBITUARY – DANIE THERON
14
By Wally Peters
THEME: EMERGING ARCHITECTS
06 HOUSE BIRCH
Architect: Tracy Levinson
14 HOUSE HARE
Architect: Thomas Leach Architects;
By Mary Anne Constable
22 HOUSE RIBEIRO
Architect: Gerhard Bosman
26 TO DESIGN OR NOT TO DESIGN?
Architect: UrbanWorks Architecture and Urbanism;
By Alex Opper
30 11 WILLIAMS ROAD
Architect: David Hamilton
32 TOWNHOUSES, BLOEMFONTEIN
Architect: Sergio Nunes Architect
COMPETITION
37 CONSTRUCTION ECONOMICS AND
MANAGEMENT BUILDING COMPETITION
By Paul Kotze
PERSPECTIVE
49 THANKSGIVING
By Nic Coetzer
END PIECE
51 MUSINGS ON ALIENATED
ARCHITECTURES – A FAREWELL
By Alan Lipman
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2011/06/19 08:00:22 PM
News & Notes
OBITUARY
DANIE THERON 1936-2011
A CHAMPION OF ARCHITECTURE is no more. On Monday, 6 June,
a month before his 75th birthday, Danie Theron died peacefully at
Langebaan on the West Coast.
Danie studied Architecture at UCT, won the Helen Gardner
Travel Prize and in 1958 completed his degree with distinction.
That was followed by a year at the Technical University of
Stuttgart, and in 1961-62 at Pennsylvania in the Master Class of
Louis Kahn. With these qualifications he opted for an academic
career and landed at Natal.
He had no easy entry into Durban of the 1960s. The profession
was staid, things conservative, and there were prejudices aplenty.
Yet, as well as proving himself an inspiring teacher, he revealed
his considerable talent when the practice Biermann & Theron
impacted on the prevailing architectural scene with a series of
expressive, if provocative, apartment buildings.
Not satisfied with his qualifications, he went on to study
City Planning at Manitoba, 1967-9. On returning to Durban he
teamed up with Hans Hallen, and the practice of Hallen, Theron &
Partners dominated design in Natal during the 1970s, acquiring a
plethora of awards.
Thereafter, Danie followed his true calling. Relocating to Port
Elizabeth where he remained until retirement at the end of 2001,
he assumed headship at the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE)
in 1982 and immediately put his shoulder to the wheel. In no
time, he had transformed the department, students were winning
awards and UPE became a Design School of national importance.
Danie went on to serve as chairman of the SACA Heads of Schools
Committee, as national president of the Planning Institute 1981-2,
and as a councillor on the National Monuments Council.
What distinguished Danie was his enthusiasm. He not only taught,
but what he built students and peers would look up to, he gladly
mentored new staff like myself, and he made it his duty to promote
emerging architects and publish their accomplishments for which he
created the possibilities. When SA Architectural Record ceased, he
co-founded CREDO (1966-73), a broadsheet pulsating with ideas and,
following that tabloid, he launched Plan (1973-75), later to become
Architecture SA, on which editorial board he served for many years.
He, in fact, remained a regular contributor and prepared his own
illustrations until 2009. How well I remember the editorial meetings
and Danie’s love of life.
I owe Danie more than mentorship into academia and the indelible
advice he once gave, namely to ‘carry on regardless’. In KwaZuluNatal he founded in 1976 the NPIA Newsletter, with the sponsorship
of what became Corobrik. On his move to Port Elizabeth, he advised
that I should take over the editorship and, in so doing, I found my
own true avocation.
Danie often had me as a visiting lecturer at UPE, when I stayed with
him and the pillar in his life, his wife Tossie, who is now much on my
mind. We formed a bond of friendship, which Danie did with many
academic and professional colleagues, staffers and former students.
With all of them, I share happy reminiscences and a gratefulness that
Danie Theron was in my life.
Walter Peters, professor of Architecture, University of the Free State
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
5
Emerging Architects
Architect: Tracy Levinson
HOUSE BIRCH, BALLITO
This project was a renovation with a very small budget. The brief was to take a 1980s facebrick, cold and
non-descript house, and create something special – as it is on the beach on Thompson’s Bay, and was not
taking full potential of its site or the North Coast weather. The client’s brief was to create a contemporary,
clean, light and warm space to live – without adding extra space.
THE BUDGET WAS TIGHT, but the client gave leeway to bring
in green principles, without adding major costs.
The main change was to strip off the existing roof, and create
a roof that takes advantage of the slope, site, wind, sun and
cross ventilation. Every addition or reduction was for a specific
purpose, trying to eliminate superfluous design items.
Simple, but integrated green principles were used, such
as dismantling the existing roof carefully and selling the clay
roof tiles and old clay bricks, and re-using the pine trusses for
screens, skirting, cornicing and scaffolding.
The old aluminium doors and windows, and skirting were
given away to underprivileged areas to use in homes being
built. The obvious ‘green gadgets’ were included, such as solar
geysers and rainwater tanks.
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
The roof was created from bolted, FSC structural pine timber
from local areas, and designed in such a way as to allow for
cross ventilation (hot air escapes through the pivot clerestory
windows) and lets in west sun in winter for heat. Large overhangs
were created for summer sun shading. Windows were added on
the north and west façades, to again let in winter sun. They are
shaded by sunscreens against angles of the summer sun.
Essentially, the inspiration in this project is the idea that
‘Architecture has the opportunity to help create solutions
to environmental challenges,’ and by challenging ourselves,
and designs, we can raise consciousness around the value of
eco-friendly and sustainable good practice design and living.
We can create spaces that people can truly have a lifestyle in.
This design portrays the idea – and the house feels twice the size.
Emerging Architects
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Terrace.
New south elevation.
Old south elevation.
Entrance.
Lounge.
5
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
7
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2011/05/26 11:21 AM
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It’s Open Season for trend-hunting and spotting brilliant
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ARCHITECT SEMINAR AT DECOREX JOBURG 2011
CHALLENGES TRADITIONAL THINKING
5 August 2011, Gallagher Convention Centre, Midrand, Gauteng
Decorex Joburg marks its 18th year with a milestone exhibition reflecting a modern
design sensibility and the latest in international thinking. With its collection of 700
high-end exhibitors, themed pavilions and new initiatives aimed at trade professionals,
the show will re-affirm its status as the premier exhibition of its kind in Southern
Africa. Plascon is the main sponsor and DStv the media partner.
presentations. Newly graduated, Ruann van der
Westhuizen, winner of the prestigious Hunter Douglas
Award at Archiprix International 2011 will discuss his
award-winning public bathhouse project.
The presentations are facilitated by Hugh Fraser and
followed by enlightening panel discussions, giving a
different perspective on the various topics.
Conversations on Architecture is aimed at design and
A highlight aimed at architects and professionals in
related design fields is ‘Conversations on Architecture’,
a full day conference held on 5th August alongside the
exhibition and sponsored by CaesarStone. One of the
international speakers challenging traditional thinking
is Peruvian architect Javier Artadi whose presentation
‘The Cube in the Desert’ looks at modern architecture
inside a very singular natural context. Fermin Vazquez
of b720 Architects in Barcelona, Spain, looks at
‘Landscape in Architecture’.
The diverse line-up of local industry players will once
again put the spotlight on contemporary issues in
building professionals, including architects, lighting
specialists, interior designers, interior architects,
electrical engineers, consulting engineers, urban
planners and other trade professionals.
Note: Conversations on Architecture will also be hosted
in Cape Town on 11 August at the CTICC. The
international line-up includes Javier Artadi from Peru
and Mariana Simas from the renowned studio mk27
based in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
For more information on show activities, speaker
line-up or online-bookings visit www.decorex.co.za.
their fields and by doing so educate and inspire in
Find Decorex SA on Facebook and follow @decorexSA
equal measure. “As architects we have to re-consider
on Twitter.
the design of buildings, going back to basics.” So
debates Morné Pienaar of the Horn Jordaan Group.
Karlien Thomashoff of Thomashoff + Partner and
The South African Institute of Architects has
assessed and validated this category 1 CPD activity.
The activity carries 1 CPD credit.
Pierre Swanepoel of StudioMAS will also give in-depth
OWNED AND MANAGED BY:
PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
Emerging Architects
By: Mary Anne Constable Architects: Thomas Leach Architects
HOUSE HARE:
THE CROW’S NEST
Thomas Leach attained his architectural degree at UCT and has been in private practice – in a quaint little
cottage in Kalk Bay – for only three years, a far cry from his time spent at a commercial architectural firm.
I’m invited in for tea, as he first explains some of his other projects.
SEVERAL OF THESE have also required new interventions within
an existing historical fabric, which meant the challenge of
discovering a sympathetic architectural aesthetic. I’m starting
to get a clear picture of his architectural stance towards such
projects – modern, contemporary, minimalist; yet extremely
sensitive in response to form, volume and materials.
Also prevalent in his work is the use of a traditional ‘arts and
crafts’ approach to timber construction. He painstakingly details
mortice and tenon joints on his timber pergolas and also dabbles
in timber furniture design.
House Hare
The two cores of Kalk Bay’s historical fabric are its old-world
Victorianesque houses, interwoven with small corrugated-iron
-clad cottages reminiscent of the town’s fishing history. It is
a designated conservation area. Built in the 1950s the existing
building managed to be built with a second storey, which caused
it to tower above its neighbours. Locals referred to it as the ugliest
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
house in Kalk Bay, and thus nicknamed it ‘The Crow’s Nest’.
It was challenging to gain the approval for renovation from
the local heritage committee, but Leach believes they accepted
his proposal because, although the intervention is contemporary,
the use of materials is sensitive.
The shape of the roof is a conventional double pitch, and
therefore identifies itself with the other buildings in the area.
The use of Zincalume corrugated sheeting (in the Victorian
profile) with contemporary detailing to clad the first floor
of the building, refers subtly to the ‘fisherman’s cottage’
aesthetic. This was directly inspired by the corrugated-ironclad cottage next door. The chosen colours – greys and whites
– blend the building into its visual context. On a grey, overcast
day the building almost disappears into its landscape.
The Kalk Bay landscape is very steep, thus houses cannot
spread out spaciously on a single floor. House Hare is a vertical
house, with each floor delicately perched on top of the other.
The actual sizes of each floor plate are a maximum of 80m2
Emerging Architects
(excluding the outside deck) on the entrance level. Surprisingly,
the house expands to six storeys – four levels of house, one
a small terraced garden and finally a garage below. The house
has a hierarchy of served and servant spaces that are functionally
navigated from top to bottom. The main bedroom sits in prime
position on the first floor and enjoys magnificent views out over
the bay.
The owner’s two grown-up sons live on the lower ground
floor, in a separate private apartment. The floor below that
(the lower lower ground floor) contains the laundry and the
house helper’s room.
The previous house was a rabbit warren of smaller rooms which
were essentially gutted, in order to create an open-plan house. The
private and service spaces (the kitchen and bathrooms) sit on the
northern edge of the building, which allows the rest of the house
to open up towards the view over the sea on the southern side.
Fortunately the bay is nestled within a protected wind pocket, so
wind factors are not a concern. As viewed in section and plan, the
building mediates from enclosure to openness. The timber deck on
the south is surrounded by a glass balustrade which, when the light
is right, almost disappears.
The concept of ‘threshold’ is sensitively explored throughout
the house. The main entrance from Duignam Road is framed by
a heavy timber pergola. Leach admits that is purely a spatial device
used in order to anchor the building onto the site and create a layer
between pedestrian and street scale, and the two-storey-high house.
This device is used again on the south side, as a framing method.
The main bedroom upstairs was designed such that the bed is
pushed forward towards the view side and the en suite bathroom
is concealed behind it, by means of a glass-backed bookshelf.
1
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Bedroom/study/bathroom.
North-west elevation.
Section A-A.
Cantilever stair.
Kitchen with skylight.
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
15
Emerging Architects
A small study is cleverly integrated as an intermediate threshold
between the two spaces. Whilst sitting at his desk, the owner
is inspired by an unobstructed view out towards the bay.
The staircase between the ground and first floors is a series
of floating timber treads that cantilever off the external wall.
The bedroom level seems to float above the floor below;
an open vertical connection is created to the floor above.
The staircase that goes downstairs to the sons’ apartment feels
more solid. It is fairly narrow, yet has a sense of openness created
by the skylight above. The large area of white wall has become
home to the owner’s extensive painting collection. Thus, the
staircase itself is an intermediary gallery as opposed to a simple
circulation device.
Another prominent feature is the use of windows and skylights
to bring in light from all sides and create 360-degree views. The
house faces south in order to look out over the sea view, yet
it receives warmth and light from the north through high-level
skylights above the kitchen and bedroom.
The challenge is dealing with aspects of sun control and privacy,
without compromising the impressive views. This is done with
a series of blinds and shutters, and also the positioning of the
6 First floor plan.
7 Ground floor plan.
8 House in context.
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
windows – high on the street side, curtain wall on the south side.
So, there is a constant mediation between privacy and openness
that changes with the various uses of the building and the time
of day.
The materials and colours used internally create a neutral
palette that is like a backdrop for the client’s antique furniture
and art collection. The walls are white; the floors vary between
white screed and softer flooring in the bedroom areas. In most
instances, the bookshelves and furniture are built into their
spaces – everything has its place. Therefore the house does not
feel cluttered.
Leach has a hand for intricate detailing and he has indulged
this throughout the house – from the complex flashing details
of the Zincalume eaves, to the shadow gaps between floor and
wall, and wall and ceiling. The new layers delicately draw away
from the existing walls.
This building unfolds like a story – each floor a chapter that
leads into another, overarched by a strong conceptual narrative.
It exists in a new state of completeness, with a new integrity that
it lacked before. Old and new are brought together successfully
into a unique whole.
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Emerging Architects
Architect: Gerhard Bosman, Terre Firme Architects
HOUSE RIBEIRO
The ever-growing awareness of the negative influence of civilization on nature has forced the building industry
– as one of the biggest consumers of energy – to explore a number of innovative approaches to address this
global issue. Over the past two decades, a number of buildings in South Africa have shown that local architects
have equipped themselves better to produce solutions at both ends of building technology.
1
A VISIT TO THE DOGON COUNTRY and the village of Djenne, in
Mali in 2008, inspired the design of this home for a young family
that was longing for a break from the suburban lifestyle. Jose and
Loni Ribeiro wished to raise their children in a home that not only
reflects their fascination with the human psyche, but also a deepfounded concern for balance with nature in all relationships.
Residence Ribeiro resulted in material use consisting of local
dolerite stone (from a nearby quarry), refitted hard-wood window
frames, reused timber floors and a minimal use of concrete and
cement. A lime clay rendering was used for interior wall finishes.
The project started with the compressed earth block (CEB)
training of eight men from the village. The CEB was to be used
in the construction of the house. The local council approved the
technology, but the NHBRC was not happy with the compressive
strength. The clients were then obliged to use fired bricks from
a local brick yard.
22
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
Resumé
Since 1996 Gerhard has worked on both community-based projects
on behalf of the Unit for Earth Construction (UEC), Department of
Architecture, University of the Free State, and residential projects
for Terre Firme Architects. After graduating in 1994, he received
a travel and study bursary and attended an Intensive Course and
a design workshop in The Low Cost Building Construction Project
at CRATerre-EAG (Superior School of Architecture of Grenoble).
This prepared him for the co-management and technical assistance
of several community projects, where small community builders,
university students and professionals were trained in the
advantages of upgrade earth construction techniques.
In 2000 he completed a master’s degree in earth construction
(DPEA-Terre) at CRATerre-EAG, and in 2001 established Terre Firme
Architects. In 2003 he completed a hybrid earth-constructed house
for the Bosman family, in the suburb of Westdene, Bloemfontein.
Emerging Architects
2
3
4
5
1
2, 3
4
5
6
View from west.
Interior views.
Skylight.
Sections.
Plan.
6
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
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Emerging Architects
By: Alex Opper
Architects: UrbanWorks Architecture and Urbanism
TO DESIGN OR NOT TO DESIGN?
That is the question architects and urban designers should be asking themselves, every time an opportunity
arises for them to engage with the built – or not-yet-built – environments entrusted to them.
1 Vilakazi Street Articulate School ‘fence’.
2 Vilakazi Street ‘open-to-sky classrooms’.
3 Yeoville Recreation Centre Canopy, as ‘stoep’.
1
IN ARCHITECT THIRESH GOVENDER’S PRACTICE, UrbanWorks
Architecture and Urbanism (established in Johannesburg in 2008),
this question is intrinsic to the practice’s engagement with the
micro and macro scales of the various -scapes (the architectural-;
the urban-; and the land-scapes) making up cities – specifically
Johannesburg – which schizophrenically host and hold us; and
exclude and include us, in their stratified socio-economic, political
and cultural multiplicities.
Through careful observation, reading and Situationist-like
immersion into Johannesburg’s complexly layered fabric, Govender
operates in a responsible mode, which is ‘sensitive to a complex
and [spatially] divisive history’. This sensitivity becomes palpable
in the collage/montage-like way his firm’s website introduces its
attitude to design (or, when appropriate, non-design). The string
of realised and, equally significantly, unrealised projects listed on
the website respectfully attempt to conceptually link the tenuous
and radically different patches which make up, on one hand, the
symbolic map and, on the other, the volatile topographic reality of
Johannesburg’s surface and its less visible depths.
26
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
Working for various practices from the early 2000s onwards,
Govender steadily began to develop and hone an interest in,
and an acknowledgement of, the importance of Urban Design as
a crucial component for successfully framing the fluidity, banalities
and, perhaps most importantly, the magical unpredictability
of the urban everyday of Johannesburg. For the pursuit of his
Masters in Urban Design, Govender carefully selected the Bartlett,
in London, as a place advocating a design-studio-based urban
Masters programme. Although the architect’s own practice remains
consciously ‘small’, it recognises, exploits and translates the
richest characteristic of Johannesburg: that of its constant process
of becoming. The think-tank-like quality of the practice is often
intensified by project-specific collaborations with partners from
other disciplines or practices. Added to this conscious exchange,
an ongoing thirst for learning through seeing and experiencing the
art of place-making – in contexts outside South Africa – is evident
in the architect’s ever-accumulating pile of sketchbooks.
The necessity of absence and the simultaneous presence of
architecture become poignantly visible in a relatively small project
Emerging Architects
2
3
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
27
Emerging Architects
for an urban upgrade, which Govender developed – in dialogue
with Steven Hobbs – into a much richer place-making exercise than
was originally intended by the Johannesburg Development Agency
(JDA) in the Vilakazi Street precinct in Soweto: the ‘missing’ corner
of an L-shaped modular concrete bench (in what could almost be
read as a tongue in-cheek, but Johannesburg-relevant reference
to Mies’s obsessive articulation of architectural corner scenarios),
becomes the opportunity for the planting of a shade-giving tree
– an ostensibly simple dot, in plan, but a powerfully volumetric
shade canopy in real space. This theme of constructive absence
is reflected in the bench’s tectonics, in the sense of the weight
given to considerations of what to leave away, in order to
achieve a whole which is more than the sum of its parts.
Here, this is achieved by the intelligence of the small holes
cast into the concrete. These material omissions allow traders,
hairdressers and other spontaneous urban entrepreneurs to slot
their own layer of architecture into the furniture-like infrastructure
of these benches – as a result, they become much more than
simple benches, by encouraging an emergent ‘architecture,
without architects’, which celebrates and gives expressive
room to the inherent richness of the every day.
taxi rank
Formal taxi rank servicing the CBD and southern and
eastern metropolitan.
urban renewal
Insular and secure renewal project (Arts on
Main), somewhat detached from context.
market
Market area trading in informal
goods – such as clothes, food,
herbs and trinkets.
taxi lay-by
Taxi lay-by (parking) area,
allowing for rest and the washing
of taxis. Lay-by area surrounded
by market and public open
space.
spares shop
Provides a range of
motor-vehicle spares.
train station
high street
Main Street connecting the CBD to
the taxi rank, flanked by shops selling
general food goods, electronics,
motor spares, linen and clothes.
taxi workshop
Off-street taxi repair workshop.
taxi workshop/repair co-op
4
Taxi repair shop operated by a retired taxi driver. Taxi
operators pay a monthly subscription to have their
fleet maintained, when necessary. Mechanics are
always available. Includes two rental rooms, a kitchen,
bathroom and waiting area.
Jeppe Street taxi situation
The consequence of the taxi goes far beyond the
actual rank, affecting the adjacent urban spaces. The
nature of activities – and their relationship to each other
and the city – are of particular relevance and briefly
explored.
5
4 Taxi geographies, Jeppe Street.
5 UrbanWalks Collages, 2010 – Be Alice.
28
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
Emerging Architects
Architect: David Hamilton Architect
1
11 WILLIAMS ROAD, WESTVILLE
2
11 Williams Road started life as a four-bedroom
house, built in 1963. The original property in Westville
was truncated by the M13 and ended up as an island
surrounded by roads.
WHEN THE CLIENT ACQUIRED the property, the house was
abandoned and derelict. He wished to convert the existing building
into office space, but this required a rezoning. As the rezoning
was going to take some time, it was decided to do the initial
submission as a residence so that construction could start in the
interim. The existing footprint was maintained and the building
had an extra floor added to maximise the floor area ratio (FAR).
As the office was to fit onto the footprint of the existing house,
double stacking the offices was not an option. Increasing the width
of the building to include an enclosed passage did not work, as it
exceeded the FAR. Thus the decision was made to have covered
verandas fixed to the outside of the building, to act as access to
the office spaces at the building’s far ends.
The building is ideally situated with both visibility and access
from the M13. The existing platform levels had to be maintained,
causing a headache as to how to access each of the four levels
from a single stair. The roof to the veranda was clad with
translucent sheeting to provide natural light, as well as cover.
David Hamilton Architect was established as a practice in 2002, operating in the Upper Highway area. Since inception, the practice has involved
a broad spectrum of building types, including hotels, hospitals, upmarket residences, industrial and commerical projects.
30
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
Emerging Architects
3
1
2
3
4
5
6
View across highway.
Entry stair.
North front.
Section.
Ground floor plan.
First floor plan.
4
5
6
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
31
Emerging Architects
Architect: Sergio Nunes Architects
1
TOWNHOUSES, BLOEMFONTEIN
A speculative development for a private developer in
Bloemfontein, the brief’s main concern was maximum
return on investment. The site was directly adjacent
to a small hill in the middle of town and thus the
design had to take this natural element, as well as
the urban context of its location, into account.
THIS TOWNHOUSE PROJECT demonstrates one of the founding
philosophies of the practice: to create architecture that contributes
meaningfully to the development of the greater built environment
and, more specifically, from which developers can make handsome
profits without relying on poor designs based on the numbers
crunched by a quantity surveyor, which seems to be what
dominates the market in Bloemfontein.
Main design ideas
The design approach to the project was to create something that
set itself apart aesthetically from what was then currently popular
and available on the market in Bloemfontein. The units were
32
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
2
Emerging Architects
4
5
1
2
3
4
5
6
Approach to development.
Houses along street.
Site plan.
First floor plan.
Ground floor plan.
Entry stair.
3
designed as sculptural cubic masses, ensuring that the maximum
coverage permissible on the site was exploited.
The planning is simple, and spaces are generous for this type
of building. Large balconies as connecting elements between
units were used as a means of separating them enough to permit
privacy, as well as providing panoramic views of Signal Hill to
the west, and Naval Hill and the city to the east.
Planar elements are accentuated through material treatment
and horizontal or vertical proportioning, in order to represent
the spaces they define and contain. Materials and colours were
selected in consideration of the greenbelt and hill that are visible
behind the buildings from the street.
6
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
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By: Paul Kotze, School of Architecture and Planning,
University of the Witwatersrand
Architectural Competition
SCHOOL OF CONSTRUCTION
ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT
Architectural Competition for the Design of a new Building in the
John Moffat Precinct
Over the years there have been many architectural competitions in South Africa. A few of these have resulted
in memorable and influential buildings. Despite this, few competition winners or entries have entered the public
or professional domain by means of evaluative articles in the professional press. Yet such competitions are
important yardsticks of the reigning architectural sensibilities at the time of adjudication. A competition entry
is also a developmental tool in the individual career of the professional architect. Competition entries can
become a rich, although often neglected, source of the history of the built environment in South Africa. Work
produced for competitions deserves serious analysis by architectural thinkers, though very few engage in this.
A notable exception is the important work of Dr Jonathan Noble (School of Architecture and Planning, Wits)
on the architectural competitions that gave form to many of the national institutions after 1994[1].
ARCHITECTURAL COMPETITIONS at South African universities
are rare events, despite the fact that these institutions have
a special obligation to promote excellence in all fields of human
endeavour. Solomon’s winning entry for the initial design of the
campus of the University of Cape Town produced one of the most
memorable and beautiful campuses anywhere. In a similar way,
the University of the Witwatersrand campus owes much of its
quality and memorability to three architectural competitions that
set up its initial urban structure. These were the competitions
won by Lyon and Fallon for the layout (urban design) of the initial
campus in 1919, the competition for the first residences won
by John Perry of Cape Town (later the architect of the 1930s
Johannesburg City Library on Market Square), as well as the
competition for the Central Block in 1922 won by Frank Emley
(Chipkin, 1993:79; van der Waal, 1986:185).[2] Taken in unison,
these actions produced the main structural elements of the
memorable space that is now known as the Library Lawns in front
of the Great Hall. In the instances of both UCT and Wits, while not
forgetting the other South African universities such as Pretoria,
Free State and North-West in Potchefstroom with similar initial
urban layouts, we should be reminded that these spaces and the
use of symbolic form and function found their antecedence in
Thomas Jefferson’s highly influential design for the University of
Virginia (founded in 1819). In addition, in 1919 the Johannesburg
architects AW Reid and Delbridge won the competition for the
design of the new medical school, built on the Hospital Hill site
close to the old Johannesburg General Hospital.[3]
Later additions to the University of the Witwatersrand also
relied on architectural competitions to ensure a built environment
of high quality. The Oppenheimer Life Sciences Building was the
outcome of a competition won by Montgomery, Oldfield, Kirby
and Elliot, and Grobelaar in 1977 (Anon 1984:38). This building,
on its very complex site, established an elegant pedestrian entry
into the campus from the premier address of 1 Jan Smuts Avenue,
enabling a rather ‘faceless’ university campus to have a presence
in the public domain of its immediate Braamfontein context. It also
created a public space that leads effortlessly to the area in front of
the Great Hall, thus extending and reinforcing the spatial definition
and pedestrian nature of this part of the campus. Its innovative
plan and section remains an exemplary study in the way to deal
with the contradictory demands of many academic buildings. The
recently completed First National Bank building on the western
part of the Braamfontein campus has also been the result of
a limited competition won by Savage and Dodd Architects (Kotze
& Munro, 2010:37). Another result of an architectural competition,
currently under construction, is the transformation of ‘University
Corner’ (previously known as the Lawson’s Building), for the Wits
Art Gallery. This competition was won by Nina Cohen and Fiona
Garson in 2005, in collaboration with William Martinson of Osmond
Lang Architects, while Cohen and Garson is responsible for the
implementation of the project. When completed, the Art Gallery
will make a major contribution to the reintegration of the campus
with its immediate Braamfontein surroundings, by refashioning
the old petrol filling station and part of the high-rise tower block
on the corner of Bertha and Jorissen Streets.
The competition for a new building for the School of
Construction Economics and Management took place in the context
of the recent ‘Urban Design Framework’ for the University.[4] The
primary elements of the Urban Design proposals are elements of
public structure, such as hard open space and green space, shared
public facilities and movement of all modes, where all university
activities should be able to find their place within the web
according to their relative need for publicness or privacy (Louw,
et al. 2009:3). All new buildings and urban spaces would need to
speak to the philosophy of the plan and underpin this objective.
Equally important is the idea of sustainability, where the university
as a leader in society would need to demonstrate that it takes
sustainable practices seriously in its own development. Aspects
of sustainability include the efficient use of land where there is no
‘lost space’, and clear directives with regard to the use of energy,
water and waste.
The site for the building is an example of where ‘lost space’
will be used for a selective infill project to achieve the desired land
-use efficiencies. Its position is important in that it is situated in
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
37
Architectural Competition
a transition zone between the developed ‘old’ part of the campus
and the out-of-sight ‘back edges’ of the ‘old’ campus, leading
towards the western parts of the campus stretching beyond
Yale Road and across the difficult divide of the M1 Motorway.
The site and building is therefore an important opportunity to
demonstrate the principles of an integrated campus, where urban
space is of such a quality that it becomes the extension of the
informal teaching and socialisation experience. In other words,
the site and the building programme also became a crucial test
for the efficacy of the urban design proposals to give form to the
University’s academic mission.
On this local urban scale, the entrants were requested to
establish a coherent Built Environment precinct with a strong
sense of identity and place. They had to give design consideration
to the east-west and north-south pedestrian routes adjacent to
the site, and between the John Moffat Building and its extension.
Heritage buildings like the Yale Telescope Building had to be
responded to and celebrated, while also following the current
heights of the surrounding buildings. Furthermore, the entrants
were required to respond to the design principles, as exemplified
by the historical edges and urban space of the Library Lawns area
of the campus. The University places great emphasis on current
best practice in educational buildings, while the new building also
has to work in complete functional and physical unison with the
existing buildings.
The John Moffat Building (1959) has a special place in the
physical history of the University of the Witwatersrand and,
indeed, in the history of architecture in South Africa. Its design
history has been excellently covered in a chapter in a book under
preparation by Prof Gilbert Herbert et al (one of the original team
of architects, together with Prof John Fassler), on projects that
are the result of architects collaborating in a creative team. The
John Moffat Building has successfully withstood the physical
ravages of time and changing architectural sensibilities, and it is
generally accepted that this building is approaching that elusive
quality of being ‘timeless’. Any building that is to become its
neighbour cannot detract from its special qualities. A new building
needs to respectfully hold its own, acknowledge past success and
yet be of its own time.
THE COMPETITION
The University was fortunate in being able to draw upon the
financial resources of the Department of Higher Education and
Training in its support for the goal of educating more built
environment professionals. The competition was presented in
two stages. During the first stage, Gauteng-based architectural
professionals were invited by the University to submit their
professional profiles and portfolios of work. The documentation
received from 17 architectural practices was evaluated by
a panel of adjudicators. Five professionals were invited and
remunerated to submit more detailed proposals. They were
26’10 South Architects, Aziz Tayob & Co-Arc Architects and
Urban Designers, Lemon Pebble Design, Mashabane Rose,
Architects + Urban Designers and Michael Scholes and Associate
Architects. All submissions to the second stage of the competition
were evaluated on an anonymous basis by the same panel of
adjudicators. They made the unanimous decision to award the
first prize and the commission for the design of the building
to Michael Scholes and Associate Architects.
The purpose of the new building is to create accommodation for
the School of Construction Economics and Management, currently
38
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
housed in the John Moffat Building. The new building will house
a 300-seat raked auditorium, other teaching venues, as well as
office accommodation for academic staff. The auditorium will
be a shared facility with the rest of the university community
having access to it.
In the discussion of the projects presented by the finalists that
follows, the idea is not to evaluate the different approaches of
the five finalists, but rather to record it and to ensure that this
body of work represented by the competition entries enters the
public domain and the professional discourse in South African
architecture. The collective input of the competition itself
becomes an archive of architectural development and responses
to a specific genre of university design, at the end of the first
decade of the 21st century in South Africa.
LEMONPEBBLE DESIGN
+ GREENBRICK DESIGN
The conceptual position of this entry offers a respectful
interpretation of and adherence to the underlying principles of
the University’s Urban Design Framework and gives a distinct
identity to the buildings forming the ‘Built Environment Precinct’.
In order to create more social interaction and coherence, the
architects explored the idea of ‘connectivity’ on various scales.
The precinct becomes a visual and spatial connector to the
city and the campus, whilst the building is to be a connector to
the social fabric of the university as well as an ‘environmental
connector’ to enhance sustainability.
They recognised that the most memorable coherent space on
the campus is the area in front of the Great Hall. The ‘greenness’
of the ‘Library Lawns’ inspired the architects to create a ‘green
plane’, extending the idea of ‘greenness’ to the John Moffat
precinct. Conceptually they rolled this ‘green plane’ out over
the precinct, across the highway, towards the western part of
the campus as a sustainable ‘carpet’ defining the precinct.
This plane is then folded to define a form that would be
inhabited and structured to form the basis of the new building
(LemonPebbleGreenBrick Design Report 2010:1). This element is
further manipulated to create green public and private spaces, as
well as roof planes. Heritage, in this instance, was informed by
the axial layout of the original campus of the early 1920s, the Yale
Telescope Building (1928) and the John Moffat Building (1959).
In the mind of these architects, the ‘green connective plane’
combines and preserves the essence, memorability and tradition
of the space-making principles of this part of the campus. By
extending this device, they wanted to continue this ‘green
heritage’ of the campus. In reference to the John Moffat Building
by Fassler and his collaborators, they mention his contextual
sensibilities – to create a harmonious whole as well as contributing
to the making of place, rather than being totally self referential.
LemonPebble Design respected this approach in their proposals,
and worked with the same module that was used in that building.
They saw this as a way to create a homogenous set of buildings
and a distinctive identity to the proposed precinct (LemonPebble/
GreenBrick Design Report 2010:5).
In terms of overall form, they aimed to create a ‘simple’
form that would neither compete with nor replicate the John
Moffat Building, but would be a bold and sensitive response.
The purposefully rectilinear and controlled C-shaped section
draws on the modernist module of the old John Moffat Building,
while it also respects the metric module of the John Moffat
Extension Building.
Architectural Competition
DISSECTED PLANES
The plane is dissected and manipulated to suit
the context. Green plane becomes green roof,
screens and permeable green planes.
FOLDED GREEN PLANE
The plane is folded to create the primary form
of the propsed building. The ‘green’ nature of
the plane is maintained as a sustainable active
wall, containing all services.
VERTICAL PLANES
Insertion of vertical green planes
that create public edges and have
an urban function.
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
39
Architectural Competition
MICHAEL SCHOLES AND
ASSOCIATE ARCHITECTS
Changes in teaching methods, the nature of the curriculum, the
size and composition of the student population and the impact
of information technology across every facet of university life
are all challenging the historic models of what a university is
and how it sits within the fabric of the city or community within
which it is located. Approaches to learning in educational settings
are changing. Traditional teacher-centered models... are being
replaced with student-centered approaches, which emphasise the
construction of knowledge through shared situations (Harrison
& Cairns as quoted in Michael Scholes and Associate Architects’
Design Report 2010).
The above statement introduces this entry with a reflection on
what the relationship between architectural/urban space and the
educational experience should be.
The performance objectives for contemporary university
buildings, as defined by Harrison and Cairns, formed an important
underpinning conceptual position for this entry. Many of these
objectives refer to the nature of academic teaching, research
and reflection, and the relationship that these activities have to
architecture. Much of this deals with solitary and collaborative
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
work, the value of high-quality physical environments for staff
morale and retention, and the value it has in creating identity for
the academic unit and the institution.
The following principles informed their design objectives:
1: achieve transparency and connectivity between the interior and
the exterior, and within the building itself;
2: create a building which enables easy and natural communication
and interaction between academic colleagues and between staff
and students; and
3: create a building that includes a social area that encourages
informal contact between all users of the building, as well as
those from other disciplines.
In order to achieve this they created a plan for a building that is
zoned into:
1: a ‘hard back’, containing the accommodation in a single-banked
office and academic space; and
2: a ‘soft’ transparent front in the form of a triple volume,
containing all the circulation and public functions of the building.
This general functional zoning is furthermore reflected in the
section of the building. This section also allows the architects to
achieve their passive-energy design objectives. The ceiling to the
triple-volume circulation space and foyer is shaped to direct the
Architectural Competition
flow of hot air towards the ventilation chimneys. This transparent
front is placed adjacent to the existing external circulation
routes, and the interconnection to these routes will reinforce
their public nature while ensuring their safety by means of higher
levels of surveillance.
On the ground floor, high levels of permeability and
interconnectivity are created by physically linking the entry to the
new Construction Economics and Management Building, to the
existing entry to the John Moffat Extension, a new exhibition area
and social area, as well as to a new courtyard. This arrangement
can rapidly support high levels of interchange between staff
and students of both schools. This principle of interconnectivity
also underpins the spatial arrangements on the first and second
floors of the building, specifically as far as the outside spaces and
new courtyard is concerned. The new building will not operate
independently from the existing John Moffat complex, as it is
connected directly on all levels. This will greatly enhance the levels
of interaction between the different schools, as well as improving
the adaptability of the built fabric. The geometry of the auditorium
on the ground floor is aligned in such a way that it respects the
Yale Telescope Building and forms a new dignified entry to it.
This entry respected the ‘Spatial Development Framework’ of the
University. In support of the framework, the architects proposed
to transform the haphazard pattern of pedestrian and vehicular
movement routes into a more rational and simplified grid, in order
to create a clear separation of vehicular and pedestrian movement.
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
41
Architectural Competition
MASHABANE ROSE ASSOCIATES,
ARCHITECTS + URBAN DESIGNERS
The primary planning concept is to bind all the built elements into
one scheme, to increase the legibility of the precinct and to ensure
that staff and studio spaces are linked thoughtfully. The primary
architectural concept is to develop a memorable counterpoint infill,
when viewed in relation to the existing elements, that has the net
effect of knitting the scheme together into one being. (Mashabane
Rose Design Report 2010:3).
The proposed intervention placed an emphasis on sculpted
surfaces, covered in black steel and sculpted landscaping. The
proposed metal surfaces will be laser cut, with a pattern to soften
the monochromatic surface. The chosen geometry is to effect and
symbolise movement, interconnectivity, distortion, disturbance
and the desire to intrigue with form-making. Many of these forms
were envisaged in steel-clad construction, with dry walling on the
inside in order to emphasise the forms.
One of the main concerns that informs much of Mashabane
Rose Associates’ conceptual position is that the east and current
main entry of the John Moffat Building should remain as such for
the whole building complex. All the buildings that comprise the
precinct will be linked via a geometrically distinct infill project.
They mention the successive buildings that constitute the precinct,
while using this idea to consolidate the buildings into a hybrid
complex, set in a spatially structured landscape that would extend
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
over the roof of the new auditorium in the existing courtyard
space of the old building (Mashabane Rose Design Report 2010:2).
This would bring the floor level of the space into the sun, enabling
a usable garden court on the same level as the main foyer space
of the John Moffat Building. They view the ‘hybrid’ nature of the
existing set of buildings as a positive aspect for the design of their
proposal. The intention of their landscape proposals is to extend
and increase the green spaces of the campus.
The new space required for the academics of the School of
Construction Economics and Management is placed on the current
roof of the John Moffat extension, while all the other shared
amenities like the lecture hall and tutorial rooms are all centrally
located in the existing courtyard, with separate entrances allowing
for more flexible use.
The architects understood that their proposals could have an
impact on the heritage value of the existing John Moffat Building.
The main design ideas that could affect this would be the changes
to the courtyard and the carport that they have proposed to
remove, while the Yale Telescope Building was to be connected
to the main ensemble with a central ramp system. The University’s
requirement regarding environmental sustainability would
be achieved by setting performance goals on aspects such
as building management, energy and other resource usage,
materials, land use, ecology, emissions and the comfort of the
building’s users.
Architectural Competition
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
43
Architectural Competition
26’10 SOUTH ARCHITECTS
These architects viewed the new building as an opportunity to
create a new ‘front door’ to the John Moffat precinct, as it is their
opinion that the area is currently a ‘backyard’. They referred to
the University’s Spatial Development Plan that envisages this
area to be more public, while it also reinforces an important
east-west pedestrian route. For them the challenge was to
develop a building that accommodated all these routes without
obscuring the entrances to the various buildings, specifically the
current entrance to the John Moffat extension. This was to be
accomplished by raising their proposed building on piloti. The
resultant covered space was envisaged as a ‘social plane’ that
would be activated by movement, with gathering areas, seating
and soft landscaping, as well as a bar underneath the auditorium
to activate it. The idea shaping and underpinning their proposal is
that the building does not need to be iconic but that the flow of
its visitors, staff and students could be. These proposed routes,
both internally and externally, could offer many opportunities to
meet and interact. Their proposal thus celebrates the John Moffat
precinct as a place and space for social interaction, communal and
individual learning, and formal and informal exchanges.
Movement through the building is carefully considered in
terms of a public to private gradient. The building is conceived
44
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
of as a consolidating, yet permeable edge to the south side of
the precinct. Its geometry is derived from the site boundary,
pedestrian movement across the site, and the angles and
geometries of the surrounding buildings.
The academic and administrative offices are grouped in the
western part of the building above the auditorium. The eastern
portion of the building steps down towards the large auditorium
of the John Moffat building. The more public functions, such as
the tutorial rooms, the auditorium foyer and lecture spaces open
up to these spaces – envisaged to act as social spaces – as well
as to the courtyard. A strong relationship is created between the
stepped roof spaces, the public courtyard and the various social
spaces incorporated into the movement routes.
Large glazed openings to the auditorium and teaching spaces
break the scale of the cellular fenestration and create a sense
of openness and transparency. The southern façade is clad in
a lightweight ‘skin’ of polycarbonate strips, arranged in a ‘random’
pattern. These patterns and rhythms are derived from the mosaic
spandrels of the original John Moffat Building’s façade. In this
case, the ‘public’ skin’ is a light and permeable scaffold that
distinguishes the CEM Building as part of the John Moffat precinct,
while at the same time identifying it as a contemporary addition.
Architectural Competition
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
45
Architectural Competition
AZIZ TAYOB ARCHITECTS INC & CO-ARC
ARCHITECTS AND URBAN DESIGNERS
This proposal is based on the principle of creating primary
routes as paths through the precinct, to define a series of
usable courtyard spaces. These would act as social and teaching
venues around which the different disciplines are arranged in
order to create safe, pleasant and useful internal and external
spaces, contributing to a sense of belonging. In their proposal,
the building for the School of Construction Economics and
Management would integrate fully with the existing buildings in
an holistic design concept. The shared venues would become the
mechanism to functionally integrate the design.
The architects respected the orthogonal framework of the
precinct plan and axial geometry that formed part of the
University’s Urban Design Framework. The key principle is their
acknowledgement of the importance and potential of the foyer
and exhibition area of the John Moffat Building to form a cohesive
functional and integrated entity with the proposed shared venues,
by redefining the circulation core of the John Moffat Building.
To achieve this, they proposed to reconfigure the existing two
lecture theatres to create enough space to connect their diagonal
ramp system to the existing oval staircase. At the same time,
their proposal provided an improved linkage to the existing
46
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
entrance to the John Moffat Extension, by means of the new foyer.
The main intention with this proposal is to connect the ensemble
of buildings – including the new building – to a new diagonal ramp
system that would provide the group of buildings with a dynamic
device to ensure interconnectedness.
The building for the School of Construction Economics and
Management forms a courtyard to the south of the John Moffat
extension. This courtyard is roofed and provides access to all the
shared facilities. Entry into this space is from the main north-south
pedestrian route that bisects the precinct.
Upon entry the whole courtyard, its ancillary facilities and
the diagonal circulation system connecting the new building
back to the old, would be on view. The courtyard is extensively
landscaped; the offices will have natural cross ventilation, while
the external façades will be screened with a perforated metal
panel. It is envisaged that the proposed arrangement will be able
to integrate the new auditorium functionally with the existing
Dorothy Susskind Auditorium, and the other lecture hall via the
diagonal ramp system. This diagonal ramp system, the existing
north-south pedestrian route and the entry to the new building
intersect at a point where social facilities are provided for students
which, in the view of the architects, would ensure a dynamic and
lively area.
Architectural Competition
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The five finalists, in combination, presented to the University
a rich array of ideas, as well as making a serious statement about
what best practice could be for buildings supporting tertiary
education in South Africa today. It is also interesting to note
how they have based their points of departure on very similar
theoretical and architectural ideas, and how these ideas could in
fact lead to very different and unique formal expressions.
Architectural competitions are by no means a foolproof and the
only ‘good’ way of ensuring buildings of quality. There is, however,
quite rightly a belief that the open selection of architects gives
the public, and public institutions like universities, ...a better
chance to defend the built and the unbuilt environment (Larson,
1994:469). There are many forms of architectural competitions,
from the open anonymous competition to the invited competition,
and each method will have its applicability and suitability. Each
form of competition will have its attractions to different types of
professionals. Architectural contest may be a corrective for the
market or rather as Larson (1994:471) suggests, a mirror of its
polarities, but competitions certainly appear to contradict the
established hierarchies of prestige on which professionals found
their expertise. The open and anonymous competition is really
based on the belief that it is a good way to discover new talent.
In any case, the belief in the subversive potential of either true
merit or sheer luck implies another belief: if open and anonymous
contest can rank talent differently than the established profession,
competition may well entice original departures from the accepted
canon of architecture, on which rankings depend (Larson,
1994:471). Much depends then on the quality and professional
integrity of the way the competition has been conducted, and on
the adjudication process. Adjudication processes in architectural
competitions are mostly done in groups. The decisions made in
this way are mostly based on compromise that tends toward
a ‘safe’ outcome. This is both ‘good’ in that the (public) institution
can defend the process and be assured of the quality of its
outcome, and ‘compromised’ in that competitions where the
‘new and avant-garde’ are chosen are mostly in the minority.
However, architectural competitions will always – whatever their
circumstances and outcomes – be seen as important events.
They are important in the individual careers of architects,
important in the history of the institution and important in the
development and history of architecture. Larson (1994:472) is
right when he argues that architectural competitions are discursive
events because they have the potential [to change] authorised
notions of what architecture is, for those who listen to the
specialised discourse in architecture. With this competition,
as well as with the previous architectural competitions, the
University of the Witwatersrand has also entered this public
discourse on architecture.
By enlisting the additional support of a high-quality built
environment in the quest to become one of the top 100
universities in the world, the University has made an important
declaration. By restricting the initial invitation to Gauteng-based
architects, they have expressed the belief that the quality of the
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
47
Architectural Competition
work of local architects is of an international quality that would
equally support and act as an image for this global aspiration.
There is also a danger in using architecture in this way in
that it can lead to a desire for the ‘object’ building designed
by the ‘superstar’ architect that would give immediate global
recognition and status to the institution. However, in this
instance that kind of possibility has been well controlled and
mediated by the University’s Urban Design Framework, with its
emphasis on achieving high-quality urban and shared spaces that
would be more important than the individual object buildings.
In this competition the University of the Witwatersrand has
followed a responsible route to ensure a positive outcome for
a building in an extremely sensitive context. This ‘sensitivity’
of context relates both to the physical realities of the site and
to the developmental goals that the institution has established
for itself. With this action, the University has underlined its belief
that the physical quality and underlying principles enabling
human interaction in its public and teaching spaces can make
meaningful contributions to the lasting quality of its educational
and discursive role in the greater society. In the past,
the University has been well served by architectural
competitions, and all indications are that it will be the case again
in this instance.
NOTE
This article reflects the personal opinion/view of the author
and not that of the adjudicating panel of the competition or that
of the University of the Witwatersrand. The author interviewed
all the architects after the competition in preparation for this
article and would like to thank them all for their professional and
courteous cooperation.
Van der Waal, G-M 1986. Van Mynkamp tot Metropolis, die boukuns van
Johannesburg 1886–1940. Johannesburg, Chris van Rensburg Publications.
26’10 South Architects, 2010. ‘Iconic Movement, maximising social interaction’.
Unpublished Report.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Prof Katherine Munro, acting dean, Faculty of Commerce, Law and
Management, University of the Witwatersrand, for the collegiate and generous
manner in which she assisted the author.
Prof Randall Bird, acting head, School of Architecture and Planning, University
of the Witwatersrand.
Ms Annamarie du Preez, librarian, University of the Free State.
Mr Ludwig Hansen, architect and urban designer, Johannesburg.
Ms Janie Johnson, librarian, Martienssen Library, School of Architecture and
Planning, University of the Witwatersrand.
Prof Walter Peters, Department of Architecture, University of the Free State.
Mr Emannuel Prinsloo, director, Campus Development and Planning,
University of the Witwatersrand.
Ms Tanzeem Razak, LemonPebble Design and Ms Sandra Felix,
GreenBrick Design.
Mr Jeremy Rose, Mashabane Rose, Architects + Urban Designers, Johannesburg.
Mr Michael Scholes, Mr Michael Rayne (project leader), Ms Debbie van
Jaarsveld and Ms Nicole Horsley of Michael Scholes and Associate Architects.
Mr Thorsten Deckler, Ms Anne Graupner, Mr Guy Trangros, Ms Nzinga Mboup
and Ms Philippa Frowein of 26’10 South Architects.
Mr Francois Pienaar and Patrick McInerney from Co-Arc Architects and Urban
Designers and Mr Haneef Tayob of Aziz Tayob Architects Inc.
END NOTES
1. Noble, J A 2007. White Skin, Black Masks: On Questions of African Identity in
Post-Apartheid Public Architectural Design, 1994-2006. Unpublished PhD Thesis,
University College London.
REFERENCES
2. The designs date back to 1920, when architects were invited by the
Anonymous, 1984. ‘The Oppenheimer Life Sciences Complex’ Journal of
University Committee to submit designs for competitive selection for the
the South African Institute of Architects. September/October:38-43.
Aziz Tayob Architects Inc & Co-Arc Architects and Urban Designers,
2010, ‘New School of Construction Economics and Management – Wits
University’. Unpublished Report.
Chipkin, C 1993. Johannesburg Style: Architecture & Society 1880s–1960s.
Cape Town, David Philip.
Hansen, L 2010. ‘Preliminary Architectural Brief for the Construction of
a New Building for the School of Construction Economics and Management
and the Refurbishment of the Existing John Moffat Building and John Moffat
Extension for the School of Architecture & Planning for the University of the
Witwatersrand’. Unpublished Report.
Herbert, G et al (in preparation) ‘Working as a Team – From the Transvaal
Group to the John Moffat Building’ chapter in the book: The collaborators:
interactions in the architectural design process.
Kotze, P & Munro, K 2010. ‘The First National Bank Building, University of
the Witwatersrand.’ Journal of the South African Institute of Architects.
March/April:32-38.
Larson, MS 1994. ‘Architectural Competitions as discursive events.’ Theory
and Society. 23:469-504.
LemonPebble Design, 2010. ‘Construction of a new building for the School of
Construction Economics and Management’. Unpublished Report.
Louw, P et al 2009. ‘A Preliminary Development & Design Framework for the
University of the Witwatersrand’. Unpublished Report.
Mashabane Rose, Architects + Urban Designers, 2010. ‘John Moffat Built
Environment Precinct Architectural Competition’. Unpublished Report.
Scholes, M and Associate Architects, 2010. ‘New Building for the School of
Construction Economics and Management’. Unpublished Report.
three pivotal east/west buildings. First prize went to Mr Frank Emley, second
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
to Messrs Cowin and Powers and third to Messrs Hawke and McKinley. The
winning design was accepted, but the original concept was extensively altered
to accommodate the decision for the first and second prize-winners to become
the joint architects of the building.
3. Building Volume 16 No 4 1919.
4. Like all universities, Wits is also subjected to constant physical and
institutional change and, in order to cope with this flux the University has,
over time, commissioned various consultants to help give direction to the
physical counterpart of such change. The latest report (2009) was prepared by
Piet Louw + Dave Dewar Architects, Urban Designers and City Planners from
Cape Town, in association with Ludwig Hansen, Architect & Urban Designer
from Johannesburg. The overriding purpose of this document is to reintegrate
the academic mission of the University with its physical context, in order for
this context to better serve the vision of the University to become part of the
top 100 universities globally. In documents such as this, many aspects come
into consideration and for the purposes of this article it would only be possible
to focus on the most important of these. In this mission of the University,
three pillars of excellence – namely staff, environment and facilities – have
a huge role to play. It is clear that a holistic teaching environment, and not
just a classroom/laboratory-based teaching model, will be very important
in this quest. The urban design proposals state in this regard: central to this
is recognising the importance of informal mixing and social contact between
students of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, as part of the total educational
experience. Spatially, the clear implication of this is the importance of creating
dignified, pleasant places of meeting in the public, where the dignity of these
places will impact on the dignity of the entire campus (Louw, et al. 2009:7).
By: Nic Coetzer
Perspective
THANKSGIVING
Photo: Nic Coetzer
My Neo-Marxist tendencies have been coming through
at dinner time. I have been trying to implement a new
regime of thanksgiving, but the food is landing up cold.
BEFORE TUCKING IN, each item on the plate is considered through
the process that brought it to the table. From the farmer and the
labourers through to the tractors and the tractor manufacturers,
through to the diesel wranglers and the truck drivers delivering
diesel and the box manufacturers and plastic wrappers and the
water producers and cleaners, who bob the fruit clear of mud,
and the supermarket tellers. I have been toy-toying with the
idea of thanking the manufacturers of the plates and knives and
forks too, but I reckon that is taking it too far.
But it has made me think about something that has vexed
me since I began on this Architecture Malarkey. It is that
overpowering power of attribution and authorship that ‘the
architect’ has. Its when that fine line between ‘I designed that’
and ‘I built that’ is blurred. Of course I am not just talking about
the problem of the architect’s office and the myriad of workers
who are often enough the real authors of the design. I am really
talking about the people who labour. What of each of the workers
who left home at 5am or earlier to travel in unsafe rattlers to toil
– really – to wrestle matter into form all day and in the sun, and
sometimes in the rain? Who are these people? What are their
individual stories? If I was president I would legislate a ‘Book of
Work’ for each building project – a mandatory portfolio of photos
and names and stories of the people involved in accreting matter
into alignment.
Instead of prayers at bedtime, my Marxist meditation would
see a considered paging through of the ‘Book of Work,’ a thankful
rumination on the safety and security and symbolic seclusion that
these individuals fought for, for our pleasure.
Perhaps office lobbies could have massive tomes on chains at
the reception desk, listing the hundreds of labourers who shifted
matter for your cool Italian-festooned footsteps to echo on marble
floors. Or better still, instead of pseudo-suede wall coating,
perhaps the lobby could be mandatorily ‘decorated’ with the
faces of all these workers.
What would be the arguments against this? Well, for one,
it could follow the patronising logic of a local television
commercial lauding labourers with beer; everything is co-opted
in the logic of Capital. But, more worryingly, like any good Marxist
project this one would be subject to totalitarian abuse. Individuals
could be tracked down by state authorities; traced across the
infrastructure of the country from project to project. Which,
of course, immediately makes me think of the Taj Mahal. If the
legend is true, then each one of the thousands of individuals
whose broken backs propped up the romantic love of the Shah
would have had nowhere to hide when the swords were drawn
for their hands. At least our constitution wouldn’t allow it.
So, in my Marxist mindset, we build a www database linking
individuals across projects. A giant empowering CV – finally,
a useful version of ‘Facebook’ called ‘Workbook’.
I suppose the crafty among us would scan the pages of
‘Workbook’ – sifting out the mediocre workers, trying to catch
evidence of the work of a skilled hand across the surface of
buildings. Perhaps our designs would increasingly follow the
precepts of Ruskin and Morris, as we become more comfortable in
a return to handcraft and lo-tech where the time and skill invested
in labour is read directly into the value of the work itself. Perhaps.
But the idea of a ‘Workbook’ for me is ultimately something more
generous, something more inclusive than a resource for designers.
It really is just a kind of thanksgiving.
As if architects don’t have enough to do, as if architects don’t
have enough to worry about, here’s a challenge: at the ‘delivery’
of your next project why not also deliver a ‘Book of Work’ too?
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
49
primador.co.za
End piece
By: Alan Lipman
MUSINGS ON ALIENATED
ARCHITECTURES – A FAREWELL
Abstract
I shall attempt, in this intentionally polemical document, to examine
what may be depicted as architectures of alienation. These have,
in recent decades, characterised much – arguably, the majority
– of our South African built environs. In so doing, I cite the
statements of predominantly lay observers. These, though, are
leavened by occasional quotations from contemporary, and past,
architectural commentators.
I am decidedly unconvinced by the putatively post-modern
and, indeed, the so-called post-post modern critiques of 20th
century architectural modernism. That applies especially to, first,
the impoverished grasp of design history displayed in many such
writings and, second, to the seemingly uncritical, the holus-bolus
borrowings from post-modernist philosophical, social, aesthetic
and literary stances to which the writings refer habitually.
I view that comment as part of a currently dominant,
widespread orthodoxy; one that eschews social and aesthetic
radicalism, one that turns fixedly from critical reasoning.
Reaction, I contend, is firmly in the design saddle. Architects
– practitioners and design theorists alike – have rushed to muster
behind the self-serving banners that taunt their discipline’s
previously principled commitments.
‘I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed
to those, who, in consequence of the complete failure of the
French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration
of mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicurean
selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of domestic
attachment and contempt for visionary philosophes.’ –Samuel
Taylor Coleridge to William Wordsworth, 1799 [1]
‘...politics has become dull, which does not mean benign.
At worst, it is defined by economic collapse, despotism and
fratricidal violence. At best, liberal regimes resist challenges
by regressive religious and nationalist movements. We are
increasingly asked to choose between the status quo or
something worse. Other alternatives do not seem to exist.
We have entered the era of acquiescence, in which we build
our lives, families and careers with little expectation [that]
the future will diverge from the present.
‘To put this another way: an utopian spirit – a sense that
the future could transcend the present – has vanished. This
last statement risks immediate misunderstanding, since utopia
today connotes irrelevancies or bloodletting. Someone who
believes in utopia is widely considered out to lunch or out
to kill. I am using utopian in its widest, and least threatening,
meaning: a belief that the future could fundamentally surpass
the present. I am referring to the notion that the future texture
of life, work and even love might little resemble that now
familiar to us. I am alluding to the idea that history contains
possibilities of freedom and pleasure hardly tapped.
‘This belief is stone dead. Few envisage the future as
anything but a replica of today – sometimes better, but
usually worse. Scholarly conclusions about the fall of the
Soviet communism ratify gut feelings about the failures of
radicalism. A new consensus has emerged: there are no
alternatives. This is the wisdom of our times, an age of political
exhaustion and retreat... radicals have lost their bite and
liberals their backbone.’ –Russell Jacoby [2]
The hope of a century?
One needs a contextual understanding within which to locate
these two introductory statements; one needs an outlined grasp
of their times. Efforts to characterise a century – as I shall perforce
be doing – are symptomatic of the hubris of ‘intellectuals.’
They are also necessarily blighted by the refusal of the material
world to dissolve neatly into favoured concepts. As critical social
theory cautions, ‘objects do not go into their concepts without
leaving a remainder... the concept does not exhaust the thing
conceived... Conceptual order is content to screen what thinking
seeks to comprehend.’ –Theodor Adorno [3]. And Hobsbawm,
in his magisterial analysis of the 20th century, draws attention
to the origins and limits of our taken-for-granted human ways
of thinking:
‘The world that went to pieces at the end of the 1980s was
the world shaped by the impact of the Russian Revolution of
1917. We have all been marked by it, for instance, inasmuch
as we got used to thinking of the modern industrial economy
in terms of binary opposites, “capitalism” and “socialism” as
alternatives mutually excluding one another, the one being
identified with economies organised on the model of the USSR,
the other with the rest. It should now be becoming clear that
this was an arbitrary and to some extent artificial construction...
This is one of the penalties of living through a century of
religious wars. Intolerance is their chief characteristic. Even
those who advertised the pluralism of their own non-ideologies
did not think the world was big enough for permanent
coexistence with rival secular religions. Religious or ideological
confrontations, such as those which have filled this century,
build barricades in the way of... understand[ing]... It is
understanding that comes hard.’ –Eric Hobsbawm [4]
Recognising the limits of conceptual thinking does not, however,
mean that we need collapse into the immediacy of that which
is ready to hand. In William Morris’ memorable words:
‘Meanwhile: if these hours be dark – as indeed they
are – at least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and fine
gentlemen, thinking the toil is not good enough for us and
beaten by the muddle... but rather let us work, trying by some
dim candlelight to set our workshop ready against tomorrow’s
daylight.’ –William Morris [5]
The social world does not disclose its secrets to those who remain
infatuated by its surface effects:
‘The power of the status quo puts up the façades into which
our consciousness crashes. It must seek to crash through them.
This alone would free the postulate of depth from ideology.
Surviving in such resistance is the speculative moment:
what will not have its law prescribed for it by given facts
transcending them... Where the thought transcends the bonds,
it tied in resistance – there is its freedom. Freedom follows
the subject’s urge to express itself. The need to lend a voice
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
51
End piece
to suffering is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity
that weighs upon the subject, its most subjective experience,
its expression, is objectively conveyed.’ –Theodor Adorno [6]
For me, the 20th century was shaped crucially at its beginning;
principally by the belief of so-called ‘ordinary’ people that daily
life can be fundamentally transformed by their actions, by their
demands for change and, above all, by the explosion of hope
which was encapsulated in, and by the early years of, the
Russian Revolution:
‘At a certain fortunate moment in modern architecture,
the aesthetic identity of Constructivism met with the practical
spirit of strict Functionalism and cohered informally. Traditions
can only live through such historic moments.’ –Jürgen
Habermas [7]
Hope abandoned... alienated
Yet the century which gave birth to that hope terminated in
an orgy of otiose self-congratulation – the apparent triumph
of the West – with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the
associated collapse of the states aligned in the Warsaw Pact.
That was and remains forcibly underwritten by a corresponding
celebration of the present impossibility of desiring anything not
sanctioned by an international corporate logo. The promise of
socialism has hastily, gleefully been consigned to the ideological
fantasy of cultural dinosaurs:
‘So the art that started as a protest and stimulus of change
became and remains institutionalised and adopted by those
whose main preoccupation is to prevent change whilst appearing
to welcome and promote it. The stationary masquerading as
progress. And here we are, up against the very nexus of the
so-called post-Modernism.’ –Bertold Lubetkin [8]
Cultural workers – including architects and academics, designers,
artists and art critics – position themselves in relation to the
complex social forces that underpin these and similar events;
that help shape the ways in which they, and others, make sense
of the world:
‘The first rule for understanding the human condition is that
men [sic] live in a second-hand world. The consciousness
of men does not determine their existence; nor does their
existence determine their consciousness. Between the human
consciousness and material existence stand communications
and designs, patterns and values which influence decisively
such consciousness as they have. The mass arts, the public
arts, the design arts are major vehicles of this consciousness.
Between these arts and the everyday life, between their
symbols and the level of human sensibility, there is now
continual and persistent interplay.’ –C Wright Mills [9]
Intellectual workers, in particular, readily embrace and
popularise the dominant tendencies of their times, serving at
appropriate junctures as, for instance, the conceptual derrieregarde of an anti-socialist, pro-Western capitalist culture and,
more recently, as post-modern ciphers of a resurgent finance
capital. Globalisation is, we are repeatedly reminded, ‘good for’
us. Against experience, we are constantly assured that we really
need it. Architects, in concert with others, have demonstrated
an ideological flexibility that has kept them gainfully at work;
a manoeuvrability that belies their supposedly ‘pure’ aesthetic
aspirations. This is not a recent phenomenon.
On 28 February 1932 the results of the competition for the Palace
of the Soviets were announced in Moscow; ‘these heralded a return
of the old architectural forms and a monumentalism which was in
52
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
total contradiction with [Constructivism].’ –Anatole Kopp [10].
The dissolution of that movement’s literary and artistic
organisations, by the Central Committee of the ruling Communist
Party two months later, signalled the end of Constructivism.
Reflecting on the architectural scene in the Soviet Union at the time,
a commentator noted with witheringly bitterness:
‘It should therefore surprise no-one when the same young
architects who for years and ad nauseam have aped the
manner of le Corbusier by making beautiful renderings of glass
façades and roof gardens on Watman paper, now draw, under
the direction of the old-architect masters, façades of classical
beauty on the same Watman paper. Was it really in vain that
modern architects proclaimed – against the violent protestations
of all kinds of halfwits – that, as far as goals are concerned, it
can never be a question of style but must be a question of a
fundamentally new conception of the problems of architecture
as such? Evidently the Russian architect, faced by an extremely
difficult and extensive cultural task, will have to be given some
time to regain his [sic] senses.’ –Hans Schmidt [11]
While much of the 20th century was preoccupied with the
possibility or denial of radical social change, the latter half
witnessed a gradual erosion – in the metropolitan heartlands of
capital, especially in Europe and the US, but also elsewhere – of
belief in the realisability of social formations that are not corporate,
consumerist or capitalist. The utopian moment of modernism, and
of socialism, was identified as the fundamental flaw of those humane
ideals; the grand narratives of social and historical change, such
as liberal Marxism, were dismissed as part of the machinery
of domination of an Enlightenment seen through tinted glasses.
Architects, particularly in the decades immediately following the
end of World War II, had commonly defined their goals in terms of
using their studiously honed knowledge, skills and understanding
of the built environment to help create a better everyday reality
for everyone. So, commenting on his [own] and his colleague’s
commitment during those decades, a pioneering modernist wrote
with self-evident confidence:
‘...architecture, as a social art, has embraced its duty with
stern determination to reshape the face of our earth in accordance with the social needs of today.’ –Eric Mendelsohn [12]
If this reality has indeed come to be regarded as irredeemably
flawed, and if the aspiration for architects to view their work
as something more than prettifying their current environments
are now perceived as root causes of that supposedly disabling flaw,
then to what might architects aspire? To what, aside from crass selfinterest, might they look for their discipline’s social goals?
Seeking a people
‘Nothing can be rushed, it must grow, it should grow of
itself, and if the time ever comes for that work then so much
the better! We must go on seeking it! We have found the parts,
but not the whole! We still lack the ultimate power, for: the
people are not with us. But we seek a people. We began over
there in the Bauhaus. We began there with a community to
which each one of us gave what he had. More we cannot do.’
–Paul Klee [13]
How is one to read these words? What sense are we to make
of this poignant conclusion to Klee’s mature, wide-ranging treatise
on modern art and architecture?
It is difficult to attend on his pain-laden final passage
through the deadening filter of sour cynicism that has become
the unquestioned, the readily embraced baggage of many
End piece
cultural commentators. We are enjoined by them to live without
hope; to subsist in an ambience which sanctions little but its
own amaranthine vacuity. What now passes for intellectual
discourse in architectural circles shuffles between celebrating
bad faith as a philosophical principle and confused (ignorant?)
historical interpretations. Critical reasoning has been reduced
to, has become analogous to the babble of pub talk. The
alcohol drowns rational analyses: ‘The text is often extreme
in argumentation. In this it follows the ‘fatal strategies’ of Jean
Baudrillard of pushing analyses to their limits. If, therefore,
many of the arguments appear to be somewhat exaggerated,
and to lead on occasions to potentially absurd generalisations,
these should be recognised as part of a deliberate strategy.’
–Neil Leach [14]
Then there are those disconcerting historical inferences; there
is that witless despair which so often accompanies purportedly
objective accounts of the past. As a case in point, see Kirsty
Wark’s modest contribution to the modish penchant for laying
sundry human ills at the threshold of modernism, of the modern
movement in architecture. Here hope – envisaging possible,
feasible utopias – is jettisoned in a thoroughly dystopian
non-sequitur vis-à-vis one of the icons of pre-World War II
modern architecture in Britain: ‘Less than a year after the
[Finsbury Health] Centre opened, Britain declared war on
Germany. The modernist plans for a Brave New World would
have to wait.’ –Kirsty Wark [15]
Let us, by way of contrast, seek now to listen to Klee; to do
so without the present mandatorily forlorn equivocation and,
emphatically, without the dispiriting world-weariness that marks,
that distorts so many current discussions. Let us, rather, attempt
to enter the imaginative space of his thought. It is possible – no,
probable – that he speaks of matters to which attention should,
indeed must, be paid. Writing in and of the cultural and political
maelstrom which was Weimar Germany, Klee’s reference to
‘a people’ was, surely, not intended as a readily acknowledged
shorthand for clients and patrons. In invoking the goal of seeking
‘the people’, he was not – as all too many supposedly star designers
currently do – trying to drum up business. Wholly to the contrary.
Here, in the first three decades of the 20th century, socially
committed artists, designers and architects came together;
some in communities like at the Bauhaus and others in the various
Werkbunde of the time. In concert, they attempted to overcome
the then, and still now elitist character of artistic, of cultural work.
They sought to transcend the entrenched disciplinary divisions
and strict hierarchies of their vocations. They dedicated their work
– themselves – to producing art for everyone, art for everyday use.
Nonetheless, given the embedded power of the prevailing artistic
establishment, they were unable to find, let alone to link with
a people... the people.
The poignancy, the anguish of Klee’s cry rests, then, in the
absence of a democratic, of a collectively supportive public
– of a culturally imbued people. Yet, he cautions, ‘nothing can
be rushed, it must grow... we must go on seeking it.’ That,
of course, is as far, far a cry from thoughtless (ignorant?)
attributions of simple-minded, utopian naiveté as it is of our
new-found savants’ airy indulgences in ‘exaggerated... absurd
generalisations’. Guarded from common troubles ‘the role
of the serious craftsman requires that the cultural workman
remains a cultural workman, and that he [sic] produces for
other cultural producers and for circles and publics composed
of people who have some grasp of what is involved in his
production. It is, I think, the absence of such a stratum of
cultural workmen, in close interplay with such a participating
public, that is the signal fault of the cultural scene today.
So long as it does not develop, designers will tend to be
commercial stars or commercial hacks. And human development
will continue to be trivialised, human sensibilities blunted,
and the quality of life distorted and impoverished.’
–C Wright Mills [16]
There is, patently, nothing particularly novel about the
notion of architects needing a people. The history of architecture
– or, more precisely, of specifically designated building designers
– since, especially, the European Renaissance is, in no small
measure, a consolidation of the increasingly fractured relationships
between architects and construction workers. This alienating
process was accompanied by, was part of the ever-tightening
embrace that designers experienced at the hands of those who
held – and now hold – social, economic and political power.
No longer cultural workers, craftsmen, architects became
professional entrepreneurs and, more recently, bureaucratic
clerks. As Goldthwaite reminds us, architects assisted in this
transformation by developing symbolic codes, languages of
representation into which people had, and have, to be initiated.
Then, as now, there was, for some, a rich bounty in shrugging
off the status of craft workers: ‘The sixteenth century architect
enjoyed a close personal relationship with his patrons, the rich
and powerful... he did not serve them as a mere functionary,
however exalted, like his predecessor the medieval mastermason. He was accepted on his own ground as a quasiprofessional. For some it meant the wealth and status to build
their own palaces alongside those of their patrons – the ultimate
mark of prestige in their society.’ –Richard A Goldthwaite [17]
Unsurprisingly – and ironically, until the advent of
architectural modernism – the welfare of members of that
always convenient abstraction, ‘the people’, was not central
to the concerns of these nascent professional entrepreneurs
or, regrettably, of their immediate successors: ‘Renaissance
treatises on architecture are profoundly class-conscious.
Moreover, in their conception of improved or ideal cities,
the theorists have definite views concerning the most fitting
sites for the hierarchy of trades and occupations. Leonardo
imagined a city on two levels: the upper one, turned to the
sun, for the upper classes; the lower – with its streets backing
onto the upper streets by means of stairs – for the workers and
“crowd of paupers”. The great humanist Alberti planned a city
which divided rich from poor, so as to keep the important and
dignified families away from the noises of petty tradesmen and
from the eyes and evil influence of the “scoundrel rabble”. In its
most extreme form, his circular plan called for two walled cities,
one held concentrically inside the other. The poor were to be
enclosed within the inner city.’ –Lauro Martines [18]
This tendency, this opportune disposition to see the supposedly
‘great unwashed’, the people, through the lenses of power and
wealth remained characteristic of architects as they became
successively incorporated into changing state institutions: whether
these were those of city states – as servants to merchant princes
– or later of national and local states. More recently, a similarly
advantageous opportunity arose with respect to international,
trans-national corporate power, with respect to global capital.
That earlier development was explicitly the case for, say,
the urbane Sir John Nash, whose plans for Regent Street,
London (1820s) were informed by an expressed desire to create,
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
53
End piece
‘...“a boundary and complete separation between the Streets
and Squares occupied by the Nobility and Gentry” and the
“narrow Streets and meaner houses occupied by mechanics
and the trading part of the community”. The “inferior
houses and the traffic would be completely cut off from
any communication with the New [Regent] Street”.’
–John Nash [19]
And far later – in the mid-20th century – Philip Johnson,
servant of corporate capital par excellence, put the matter in
perhaps less choice but no less blunt terms: ‘We [architects]
are whores and want to be paid as highly as possible for doing
what we do best. Therefore we do skyscrapers best – they’re
the most profitable.’ –Philip Johnson [20]
Johnson’s chilling effort to implicate others in his
indeterminate ‘we’; in, that is, his coarse, attention-gathering
depiction of professional morality is, some might argue,
commendably frank. Possibly. No less, perhaps, than the crude
master/servant relationship which characterises what, in his all
too apt description, Paul Finch depicts as the basis of employer/
employee relations in many design offices: ‘The model of the
architect’s office as a domestic household, with the architect
as master and toiling designers as domestic servants, exists
to this day in some grand offices where the concept of payment
for overtime is non-existent .’ –Paul Finch [21]
This male/autocratic view of professional architects as
masterful gentlemen who habitually issue instructions to
subordinates – within their offices and/or on construction sites
– can scarcely commend itself to female design students, or
to ‘toiling’ women employees. Nor, one imagines, was or is it
expected to do so: few women play anything but secondary,
even subservient roles in the upper reaches of the profession.
Howard Robertson, a former president of the Royal Institute
of British Architects (RIBA), made this unambiguously plain in
a book he published in 1955. There, he shared his emancipatory
thoughts on the distinctive qualities that prospective employers
might be expected to require of their female underlings:
‘Almost exactly the same qualities you would look for in a good
housemaid – someone neat, obliging, unobtrusive. It is not so
much your qualities as a great planner which interest him in the
early beginning, as your willingness to help out on the telephone
or even to know how to type. The unforgivable sin in a beginner
is sloppiness.’ –Howard Robertson [22]
William Morris – artist, poet, designer, historian, social philosopher
– was not given to tolerating such pomp or self-congratulatory
conceit in artistic, as well as other human, endeavours. He wrote
disparagingly, and despairingly, of ‘the great architect, carefully
kept for the purpose and guarded from the common troubles of the
common man.’ –Morris [23]
More than a century later, one can but echo his troubled concern.
And the roots of that concern have deepened since his day.
Architects are now locked in a seemingly unbreakable corporate
embrace; an envelopment that is tightening via information and
communication technology, a clutch that threatens further to
consolidate designers’ disabling distance from the actual production
of buildings and from the real lives of building users, the people.
Looking back to modernism
In a world of dislocated images, of recycled architectural pasts,
to remember is to resist. To resist is to reject the packaged histories
in current vogue. To insist on recall is to oppose the cosy amnesia
of the imported, the imposed building styles which engulf us.
54
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
To question this eclecticism is to seek our own histories. But the
questions press. Whose histories? Whose memories? Answers do
not come readily. Here, at the southern rim of Africa, most people
are dislocated from their pasts; some joyfully, others reluctantly,
yet others refusing the realities of displacement. All are preoccupied
with matters of identity – including architectural identities.
Post–post-modern pastiche, the recent design mode, is offered
as a practice for, among other goals, gratifying people’s need for
a sense of belonging. Such an approach, the argument runs, offers
a way of repairing the damage resulting from modernist practices;
a way, supposedly, of affirming rather than denying the past. In
brief, post–modernists advocate turning from those who, they claim,
abandoned historical reference. Again the questions are immediate:
who or what is being jettisoned, how and in what ways? Much has
been said in response, particularly by critical cultural theorists in
the US and western Europe. This, to my knowledge, has not been
the case in southern Africa. Here, such issues have, seemingly,
eluded critical focus.
At this point, I must interject to make my stance explicit.
Architecture – as practice and as product – does not simply reflect
the societies in which it is produced. Buildings are not mere images
of what is, of how people live presently. Quite the contrary: via its
material presence as embodied human action, architecture can,
does speak of what might be, of how we might live. Appropriate
architectures ought, then, to help shape, to hone people’s desires.
This is far from being solely a matter of form, of style. During
the 19th century, engineers and architects were called on to
accommodate new social relationships in the new building types
they designed: factories, railway stations, public libraries... So,
South African designers are now being summoned to turn their
skills to the new spatial demands of their burgeoning democratic
society. Their tasks, their choices are by no means easy.
There are at least two modern architectures. The first appears
in scholarly books as works of inspiration; the outstanding buildings
of modernism which few see, let alone live or work in. These are
the avant garde buildings of the early 20th century – mainly in
Europe – when for the first time architects grappled with the
issues surrounding mass populations, industrial production,
technological innovation. This is an architecture of change; a time
of revolution, crumbling empires, social hope... of futures. This
is the architecture of the founders of the Modern Movement; the
dreams, made concrete, of a cultural elite. These are the buildings
through which designers strained to express humane ideals.
What happened? In the ‘socialist’ East – rejection, expulsion,
exile; social content ripped from form, deformed. In the ‘free’
West – incorporation: an architecture of defeat, of aesthetic form
torn from social content. This, of course, is the second modern
architecture, the all too familiar one in which many live and work.
This is the segregated township, the suburb of individual, of social
isolation: neighbourhood without communality. This is rampant
urban growth, speculative development; banks, office parks, finance
houses... shopping malls. This is the new factory: a fine-tooled
envelope around a stripped, cheap interior – packaged exploitation
in a landscaped industrial park. This is Speculator-Modern, the
architecture of the international market: inflated opulence for the
few, pinched spaces, shoddy materials, botched work for the rest.
It is a rotten architecture. But then, for most, it has been a rotten
society. And the post–modernist response? Well... architecture is
about making architecture popular, all the way to the bank.
Shifts in the global market of capital have been accompanied
by changes in the manner in which many aspects of culture have
End piece
been given material expression. In architecture and urban design,
this has been marked by an explicitly anti-modernist trajectory,
the thrust of post-modernism.
That is presented as, inter alia, a response to perceived modernist
ills: in particular, the posited failure to articulate local senses of
identity, to create vernacular ‘places’ to which people are attached
rather than universalistic ‘spaces’ that they occupy passively.
Post-modernism is proffered as an antidote to modernist failures.
It is presented as a cultural practice cleansed of utopian
aspirations. By-passing the determinedly social goals of many
modernists, post-modern designers claim to operate in what
they choose to depict as the realm of established, so-called
neutral aesthetics.
Accordingly, post-modern architectural and urban forms
tend to evoke, even to re-represent admired precedents. In the
main, these comprise serial repetitions of past models that are
deemed successful. In the post-modern lexicon, local identities
are universally experienced as being rooted in selected aspects
of European culture and history; particular emphasis is placed on
beaux arts readings from, say, ancient Greece, the Renaissance
and subsequent European neo-classicisms. These instances are
borrowed from the past to be hung on contemporary structures
with their up-to-date facilities, equipment and patterns of use.
A critique of the symbolic nostalgias of post-modern design
must, thus, be founded on recognising the specifically local
contexts in which designers work. What one need ask is, say,
post-modern neo-Georgian or Tudorbethan architecture in early
21st century South Africa? Whose memories do such buildings
stir, whose nostalgias do they gratify, whose cultural roots are
being acknowledged?
In these respects, current architectural and urban design
historicisms are undisguised expressions of consummate alienation.
They are symbols of not-belonging: those who identify with them
are not from here, from southern Africa. Implicitly – and too
frequently, explicitly – they yearn to be elsewhere. Paradoxically,
post-modern architecture represents a desire to erase, to dismiss
local senses of place. It is imported, distinctively not-African.
Concluding comment
Most architects in South Africa are lost in unthinking postmodernist or, far worse, in routine post-post-modernist filching
from long-gone European styles and what are thought to be
exotic, ‘other’ architectures. A handful, usually the more analytic
and socially aware, are troubled by what is happening to their
profession. They are concerned about how, currently, this or
that feature of other architectures is being lifted out of context
to be dumped in unsuited circumstances; in conditions that are
climatically, economically, socially inappropriate. In their efforts
to resist this, they struggle at the enormously complex task
of identifying what is genuinely local, what is loved and viable
about the ways of life and the built worlds in which they live.
They try to pinpoint, to study what is distinct about the buildings
that have helped shape their physical and cultural settings.
These are southern African practitioners who search for
architectures that are locally rooted. They are rare, their
work is scattered, its regional qualities not readily recognisable.
A caution: the few from whom we are able to draw examples
are predominantly white – like those accomplished, modernist,
designers Norman Eaton, Douglass Cowin and Roelof
Uytenbogaardt. The profession has been, and for the present
remains, confined to the middle classes of that population group.
Pre-liberation figures (1993) indicate that of 2 480 then-registered
architects, 12 (0.48 percent) were black, of 1 454 students architects,
56 (3.85 percent) were black and of the 144 graduates that year, three
(2.08 percent) were black. (To my knowledge, divisively racial data of
this nature is no longer gathered or published.) That some among the
dominant group have cared about struggling for regional expressions
is a tribute to their sensitivity; especially as their colleagues’ eyes
have traditionally been, and even now remain, fixed on overseas.
To borrow a sentient phrase: it is a long walk to architectures
that are sensitively responsible, to designers who are actively
responsive to the people’s needs. And to invert Paul Klee’s
impassioned cry – the people seek such architectures. Where but
in our design-hungry, long-neglected countryside, where but in
our dishevelled townships, our informal settlements, are these
architectures and these designers in more urgent demand?
REFERENCES:
1 Coleridge cited in Russell Jacoby, The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture
in an Age of Apathy, Basic Books, New York, p. XIII.
2 Jacoby, ibid., XI-XII.
3 Theodor W Adorno (trans. E B Ashton), Negative Dialectics, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, London, 1973, p. 5.
4 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991,
Michael Joseph, London, 1994, pp. 4-5.
5 William Morris – taken from an unattributed exhibition poster.
6 Adorno, op. cit., pp. 17-18.
7 Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modern and Post-modern Architecture,’ 9H, 1982, 4: 9-14, p.14.
8 Berthold Lubetkin, ‘Royal Gold Medal Address June 29 1982’ in John Allen,
Berthold Lubetkin: Architecture and the Tradition of Progress, RIBA Publications,
London, 1992, p. 587.
9 C Wright Mills, ‘Man in the Middle: The Designer,’ in I L Horowitz (ed),
Power, Politics and People: the Collected Essays of C Wright Mills, OUP, London,
1967, p. 375.
10 Anatole Kopp, Constructivist Architecture in the USSR, Academy Editions,
London, 1985, p. 154.
11 Hans Schmidt, ‘The Soviet Union and Modern Architecture’ in El Lissitzky
(trans. Eric Dluhosch), Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution, Lund
Humphies, London, 1970, p. 221.
12 Eric Mendelsohn, ‘Architecture today,’ in Three Lectures on Architecture,
University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1944, p.24.
13 Paul Klee, On Modern Art, Faber and Faber, London, 1948, pp. 54-5.
14 Neil Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture, MIT Press, 1999, p.vii.
15 Kirsty Wark, From Here To Eternity, Open University, BBC2,
26 November 2001.
16 C Wright Mills , ‘Man in the Middle: The Designer’ in I. L. Horowitz (ed.),
Power, Politics and People: the Collected Essays of C Wright Mills, OUP, London,
1967, pp. 385-6.
17 Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic
and Social History, The Johns Hopkins University Press, London, 1980, p.396.
18 Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy,
Allen Lane, London, 1980, p. 381.
19 John Nash cited in Rodney Mace, Trafalgar Square: Emblem of Empire,
Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1976, p. 33.
20 Philip Johnson cited in Stephen Games, Behind the Façade, BBC, London,
1985, p. 94.
21 Paul Finch, ‘Prisoner of Gender of the Equality of Uncertainty’, in K Ruedi,
S Wigglesworth, D McCorquodale (eds.), Desiring Practices: Architecture,
Gender and the Interdisciplinary, Black Dog Publishing Ltd, London, 1996, p.136.
22 Howard Robertson cited in Paul Finch, ibid. p.136.
23 William Morris cited in Bill Risebero, The Story of Western Architecture,
Herbert Press, London, 2001, p.119.
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
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End piece
By: Alan Lipman
MUSINGS ON ALIENATED
ARCHITECTURES
– A FAREWELL
Abstract
I shall attempt, in this intentionally polemical document, to examine
what may be depicted as architectures of alienation. These have,
in recent decades, characterised much – arguably, the majority
– of our South African built environs. In so doing, I cite the
statements of predominantly lay observers. These, though, are
leavened by occasional quotations from contemporary, and past,
architectural commentators.
I am decidedly unconvinced by the putatively post-modern
and, indeed, the so-called post-post modern critiques of 20th
century architectural modernism. That applies especially to, first,
the impoverished grasp of design history displayed in many such
writings and, second, to the seemingly uncritical, the holus-bolus
borrowings from post-modernist philosophical, social, aesthetic
and literary stances to which the writings refer habitually.
I view that comment as part of a currently dominant,
widespread orthodoxy; one that eschews social and aesthetic
radicalism, one that turns fixedly from critical reasoning. Reaction,
I contend, is firmly in the design saddle. Architects – practitioners
and design theorists alike – have rushed to muster behind the
self-serving banners that taunt their discipline’s previously
principled commitments.
‘I wish you would write a poem, in blank verse, addressed
to those, who, in consequence of the complete failure of the
French Revolution, have thrown up all hopes of the amelioration
of mankind, and are sinking into an almost epicurean
selfishness, disguising the same under the soft titles of
domestic attachment and contempt for visionary philosophes.’
–Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Wordsworth, 1799 [1]
‘...politics has become dull, which does not mean benign.
At worst, it is defined by economic collapse, despotism and
fratricidal violence. At best, liberal regimes resist challenges
by regressive religious and nationalist movements. We are
increasingly asked to choose between the status quo or
something worse. Other alternatives do not seem to exist.
We have entered the era of acquiescence, in which we build
our lives, families and careers with little expectation [that]
the future will diverge from the present.
‘To put this another way: an utopian spirit – a sense that
the future could transcend the present – has vanished. This
last statement risks immediate misunderstanding, since utopia
today connotes irrelevancies or bloodletting. Someone who
believes in utopia is widely considered out to lunch or out
to kill. I am using utopian in its widest, and least threatening,
meaning: a belief that the future could fundamentally surpass
the present. I am referring to the notion that the future texture
of life, work and even love might little resemble that now
familiar to us. I am alluding to the idea that history contains
possibilities of freedom and pleasure hardly tapped.
‘This belief is stone dead. Few envisage the future as
anything but a replica of today – sometimes better, but
usually worse. Scholarly conclusions about the fall of the
Soviet communism ratify gut feelings about the failures
of radicalism. A new consensus has emerged: there are
no alternatives. This is the wisdom of our times, an age
of political exhaustion and retreat... radicals have lost their
bite and liberals their backbone.’ –Russell Jacoby [2]
The hope of a century?
One needs a contextual understanding within which to locate
these two introductory statements; one needs an outlined grasp
of their times. Efforts to characterise a century – as I shall perforce
be doing – are symptomatic of the hubris of ‘intellectuals.’
They are also necessarily blighted by the refusal of the material
world to dissolve neatly into favoured concepts. As critical social
theory cautions, ‘objects do not go into their concepts without
leaving a remainder... the concept does not exhaust the thing
conceived... Conceptual order is content to screen what thinking
seeks to comprehend.’ –Theodor Adorno [3]. And Hobsbawm,
in his magisterial analysis of the 20th century, draws attention
to the origins and limits of our taken-for-granted human ways
of thinking:
‘The world that went to pieces at the end of the 1980s was
the world shaped by the impact of the Russian Revolution of
1917. We have all been marked by it, for instance, inasmuch
as we got used to thinking of the modern industrial economy
in terms of binary opposites, “capitalism” and “socialism”
as alternatives mutually excluding one another, the one
being identified with economies organised on the model
of the USSR, the other with the rest. It should now be
becoming clear that this was an arbitrary and to some extent
artificial construction... This is one of the penalties of living
through a century of religious wars. Intolerance is their chief
characteristic. Even those who advertised the pluralism of their
own non-ideologies did not think the world was big enough for
permanent coexistence with rival secular religions. Religious
or ideological confrontations, such as those which have filled
this century, build barricades in the way of... understand[ing]
... It is understanding that comes hard.’ –Eric Hobsbawm [4]
Recognising the limits of conceptual thinking does not, however,
mean that we need collapse into the immediacy of that which
is ready to hand. In William Morris’ memorable words:
‘Meanwhile: if these hours be dark – as indeed they
are – at least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and fine
gentlemen, thinking the toil is not good enough for us and
beaten by the muddle .. but rather let us work, trying by some
dim candlelight to set our workshop ready against tomorrow’s
daylight. –William Morris [5]
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
59
End piece
The social world does not disclose its secrets to those who
remain infatuated by its surface effects:
‘The power of the status quo puts up the façades into
which our consciousness crashes. It must seek to crash
through them. This alone would free the postulate of depth
from ideology. Surviving in such resistance is the speculative
moment: what will not have its law prescribed for it by given
facts transcending them... Where the thought transcends the
bonds, it tied in resistance – there is its freedom. Freedom
follows the subject’s urge to express itself. The need to lend
a voice to suffering is a condition of all truth. For suffering is
objectivity that weighs upon the subject, its most subjective
experience, its expression, is objectively conveyed.’
–Theodor Adorno [6]
For me, the 20th century was shaped crucially at its beginning;
principally by the belief of so-called ‘ordinary’ people that
daily life can be fundamentally transformed by their actions,
by their demands for change and, above all, by the explosion
of hope which was encapsulated in, and by the early years of,
the Russian Revolution:
‘At a certain fortunate moment in modern architecture,
the aesthetic identity of Constructivism met with the
practical spirit of strict Functionalism and cohered informally.
Traditions can only live through such historic moments.’
–Jurgen Habermas [7]
Hope abandoned... alienated
Yet the century which gave birth to that hope terminated in
an orgy of otiose self-congratulation – the apparent triumph
of the West – with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the
associated collapse of the states aligned in the Warsaw Pact.
That was and remains forcibly underwritten by a corresponding
celebration of the present impossibility of desiring anything not
sanctioned by an international corporate logo. The promise of
socialism has hastily, gleefully been consigned to the ideological
fantasy of cultural dinosaurs:
‘So the art that started as a protest and stimulus of
change became and remains institutionalised and adopted
by those whose main preoccupation is to prevent change
whilst appearing to welcome and promote it. The stationary
masquerading as progress. And here we are, up against the
very nexus of the so-called post-Modernism.’ –Bertold
Lubetkin [8]
Cultural workers – including architects and academics,
designers, artists and art critics – position themselves in relation
to the complex social forces that underpin these and similar
events; that help shape the ways in which they, and others,
make sense of the world:
‘The first rule for understanding the human condition is that
men [sic] live in a second-hand world. The consciousness
of men does not determine their existence; nor does their
existence determine their consciousness. Between the human
consciousness and material existence stand communications
and designs, patterns and values which influence decisively
such consciousness as they have. The mass arts, the public
arts, the design arts are major vehicles of this consciousness.
Between these arts and the everyday life, between their
symbols and the level of human sensibility, there is now
continual and persistent interplay.’ –C Wright Mills [9]
Intellectual workers, in particular, readily embrace and
popularise the dominant tendencies of their times, serving
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
at appropriate junctures as, for instance, the conceptual
derriere-garde of an anti-socialist, pro-Western capitalist
culture and, more recently, as post-modern ciphers of
a resurgent finance capital. Globalisation is, we are repeatedly
reminded, ‘good for’ us. Against experience, we are constantly
assured that we really need it. Architects, in concert with others,
have demonstrated an ideological flexibility that has kept them
gainfully at work; a manoeuvrability that belies their supposedly
‘pure’ aesthetic aspirations. This is not a recent phenomenon.
On 28 February 1932 the results of the competition for the
Palace of the Soviets were announced in Moscow; ‘these heralded
a return of the old architectural forms and a monumentalism
which was in total contradiction with [Constructivism].’ –Anatole
Kopp [10]. The dissolution of that movement’s literary and artistic
organisations, by the Central Committee of the ruling Communist
Party two months later, signalled the end of Constructivism.
Reflecting on the architectural scene in the Soviet Union at
the time, a commentator noted with witheringly bitterness:
‘It should therefore surprise no-one when the same young
architects who for years and ad nauseam have aped the
manner of le Corbusier by making beautiful renderings of
glass façades and roof gardens on Watman paper, now draw,
under the direction of the old-architect masters, façades of
classical beauty on the same Watman paper. Was it really in
vain that modern architects proclaimed – against the violent
protestations of all kinds of halfwits – that, as far as goals are
concerned, it can never be a question of style but must be
a question of a fundamentally new conception of the problems
of architecture as such? Evidently the Russian architect,
faced by an extremely difficult and extensive cultural task,
will have to be given some time to regain his [sic] senses.’
–Hans Schmidt [11]
While much of the 20th century was preoccupied with the
possibility or denial of radical social change, the latter half
witnessed a gradual erosion – in the metropolitan heartlands
of capital, especially in Europe and the US, but also elsewhere
– of belief in the realisability of social formations that are not
corporate, consumerist or capitalist. The utopian moment of
modernism, and of socialism, was identified as the fundamental
flaw of those humane ideals; the grand narratives of social and
historical change, such as liberal Marxism, were dismissed as part
of the machinery of domination of an Enlightenment seen through
tinted glasses.
Architects, particularly in the decades immediately following the
end of Wold War II, had commonly defined their goals in terms of
using their studiously honed knowledge, skills and understanding
of the built environment to help create a better everyday reality
for everyone. So, commenting on his [own] and his colleague’s
commitment during those decades, a pioneering modernist wrote
with self-evident confidence:
‘...architecture, as a social art, has embraced its duty
with stern determination to reshape the face of our
earth in accordance with the social needs of today.’
–Eric Mendelsohn [12]
If this reality has indeed come to be regarded as irredeemably
flawed, and if the aspiration for architects to view their work
as something more than prettifying their current environments
are now perceived as root causes of that supposedly disabling
flaw, then to what might architects aspire? To what, aside
from crass self-interest, might they look for their discipline’s
social goals?
End piece
Seeking a people
‘Nothing can be rushed, it must grow, it should grow of
itself, and if the time ever comes for that work then so much
the better! We must go on seeking it! We have found the parts,
but not the whole! We still lack the ultimate power, for: the
people are not with us. But we seek a people. We began over
there in the Bauhaus. We began there with a community to
which each one of us gave what he had. More we cannot do.’
–Paul Klee [13]
How is one to read these words? What sense are we to make
of this poignant conclusion to Klee’s mature, wide-ranging treatise
on modern art and architecture?
It is difficult to attend on his pain-laden final passage
through the deadening filter of sour cynicism that has become
the unquestioned, the readily embraced baggage of many
cultural commentators. We are enjoined by them to live
without hope; to subsist in an ambience which sanctions
little but its own amaranthine vacuity. What now passes for
intellectual discourse in architectural circles shuffles between
celebrating bad faith as a philosophical principle and confused
(ignorant?) historical interpretations. Critical reasoning has
been reduced to, has become analogous to the babble of
pub talk. The alcohol drowns rational analyses: ‘The text is
often extreme in argumentation. In this it follows the ‘fatal
strategies’ of Jean Baudrillard of pushing analyses to their
limits. If, therefore, many of the arguments appear to be
somewhat exaggerated, and to lead on occasions to potentially
absurd generalisations, these should be recognised as part
of a deliberate strategy.’ –Neil Leach [14]
Then there are those disconcerting historical inferences;
there is that witless despair which so often accompanies
purportedly objective accounts of the past. As a case in point,
see Kirsty Wark’s modest contribution to the modish penchant
for laying sundry human ills at the threshold of modernism, of
the modern movement in architecture. Here hope – envisaging
possible, feasible utopias – is jettisoned in a thoroughly
dystopian non-sequitur vis-à-vis one of the icons of pre-World
War II modern architecture in Britain: ‘Less than a year after
the [Finsbury Health] Centre opened, Britain declared war on
Germany. The modernist plans for a Brave New World would
have to wait.’ –Kirsty Wark [15]
Let us, by way of contrast, seek now to listen to Klee; to do
so without the present mandatorily forlorn equivocation and,
emphatically, without the dispiriting world-weariness that marks,
that distorts so many current discussions. Let us, rather, attempt
to enter the imaginative space of his thought. It is possible – no,
probable – that he speaks of matters to which attention should,
indeed must, be paid. Writing in and of the cultural and political
maelstrom which was Weimar Germany, Klee’s reference to
‘a people’ was, surely, not intended as a readily acknowledged
shorthand for clients and patrons. In invoking the goal of seeking
‘the people’, he was not – as all too many supposedly star
designers currently do – trying to drum up business. Wholly to
the contrary. Here, in the first three decades of the 20th century,
socially committed artists, designers and architects came together;
some in communities like at the Bauhaus and others in the various
Werkbunde of the time. In concert, they attempted to overcome
the then, and still now elitist character of artistic, of cultural work.
They sought to transcend the entrenched disciplinary divisions
and strict hierarchies of their vocations. They dedicated their work
– themselves – to producing art for everyone, art for everyday use.
Nonetheless, given the embedded power of the prevailing artistic
establishment, they were unable to find, let alone to link with
a people... the people.
The poignancy, the anguish of Klee’s cry rests, then, in the
absence of a democratic, of a collectively supportive public
– of a culturally imbued people. Yet, he cautions, ‘nothing
can be rushed, it must grow... we must go on seeking it.’
That, of course, is as far, far a cry from thoughtless (ignorant?)
attributions of simple-minded, utopian naiveté as it is of
our new-found savants’ airy indulgences in ‘exaggerated...
absurd generalisations’. Guarded from common troubles
‘the role of the serious craftsman requires that the cultural
workman remains a cultural workman, and that he [sic]
produces for other cultural producers and for circles and
publics composed of people who have some grasp of what is
involved in his production. It is, I think, the absence of such
a stratum of cultural workmen, in close interplay with such
a participating public, that is the signal fault of the cultural
scene today. So long as it does not develop, designers will
tend to be commercial stars or commercial hacks. And human
development will continue to be trivialised, human sensibilities
blunted, and the quality of life distorted and impoverished.’
–C Wright Mills [16]
There is, patently, nothing particularly novel about the notion
of architects needing a people. The history of architecture – or,
more precisely, of specifically designated building designers
– since, especially, the European Renaissance is, in no small
measure, a consolidation of the increasingly fractured relationships
between architects and construction workers. This alienating
process was accompanied by, was part of the ever-tightening
embrace that designers experienced at the hands of those who
held – and now hold – social, economic and political power.
No longer cultural workers, craftsmen, architects became
professional entrepreneurs and, more recently, bureaucratic
clerks. As Goldthwaite reminds us, architects assisted in this
transformation by developing symbolic codes, languages
of representation into which people had, and have, to be
initiated. Then, as now, there was, for some, a rich bounty
in shrugging off the status of craft workers: ‘The sixteenth
century architect enjoyed a close personal relationship with
his patrons, the rich and powerful... he did not serve them
as a mere functionary, however exalted, like his predecessor
the medieval master-mason. He was accepted on his own
ground as a quasi-professional. For some it meant the wealth
and status to build their own palaces alongside those of their
patrons – the ultimate mark of prestige in their society.’
–Richard A Goldthwaite [17]
Unsurprisingly – and ironically, until the advent of
architectural modernism – the welfare of members of that
always convenient abstraction, ‘the people’, was not central
to the concerns of these nascent professional entrepreneurs
or, regrettably, of their immediate successors: ‘Renaissance
treatises on architecture are profoundly class-conscious .
Moreover, in their conception of improved or ideal cities,
the theorists have definite views concerning the most fitting
sites for the hierarchy of trades and occupations. Leonardo
imagined a city on two levels: the upper one, turned to
the sun, for the upper classes; the lower – with its streets
backing onto the upper streets by means of stairs – for the
workers and “crowd of paupers”. The great humanist Alberti
planned a city which divided rich from poor, so as to keep
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
61
End piece
the important and dignified families away from the noises of
petty tradesmen and from the eyes and evil influence of the
“scoundrel rabble”. In its most extreme form, his circular plan
called for two walled cities, one held concentrically inside the
other. The poor were to be enclosed within the inner city.’
–Lauro Martines [18]
This tendency, this opportune disposition to see the supposedly
‘great unwashed’, the people, through the lenses of power and
wealth remained characteristic of architects as they became
successively incorporated into changing state institutions: whether
these were those of city states – as servants to merchant princes
– or later of national and local states. More recently, a similarly
advantageous opportunity arose with respect to international,
trans-national corporate power, with respect to global capital.
That earlier development was explicitly the case for, say,
the urbane Sir John Nash, whose plans for Regent Street,
London (1820s) were informed by an expressed desire to
create, ‘...“a boundary and complete separation between
the Streets and Squares occupied by the Nobility and Gentry”
and the “narrow Streets and meaner houses occupied by
mechanics and the trading part of the community”. The
“inferior houses and the traffic would be completely cut off
from any communication with the New [Regent] Street”.’
–John Nash [19]
And far later – in the mid-20th century – Philip Johnson,
servant of corporate capital par excellence, put the matter in
perhaps less choice but no less blunt terms: ‘We [architects]
are whores and want to be paid as highly as possible for
doing what we do best. Therefore we do skyscrapers best
– they’re the most profitable.’ –Philip Johnson [20]
Johnson’s chilling effort to implicate others in his
indeterminate ‘we’; in, that is, his coarse, attentiongathering depiction of professional morality is, some
might argue, commendably frank. Possibly. No less,
perhaps, than the crude master/servant relationship which
characterises what, in his all too apt description, Paul Finch
depicts as the basis of employer/employee relations in
many design offices: ‘The model of the architect’s office
as a domestic household, with the architect as master and
toiling designers as domestic servants, exists to this day
in some grand offices where the concept of payment for
overtime is non-existent .’ –Paul Finch [21]
This male/autocratic view of professional architects as
masterful gentlemen who habitually issue instructions to
subordinates – within their offices and/or on construction
sites – can scarcely commend itself to female design
students, or to ‘toiling’ women employees. Nor, one imagines,
was or is it expected to do so: few women play anything
but secondary, even subservient roles in the upper reaches
of the profession. Howard Robertson, a former president of
the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), made this
unambiguously plain in a book he published in 1955. There,
he shared his emancipatory thoughts on the distinctive
qualities that prospective employers might be expected to
require of their female underlings: ‘Almost exactly the same
qualities you would look for in a good housemaid – someone
neat, obliging, unobtrusive. It is not so much your qualities
as a great planner which interest him in the early beginning,
as your willingness to help out on the telephone or even
to know how to type. The unforgivable sin in a beginner is
sloppiness.’ –Howard Robertson [22]
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ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
William Morris – artist, poet, designer, historian, social
philosopher – was not given to tolerating such pomp or selfcongratulatory conceit in artistic, as well as other human,
endeavours. He wrote disparagingly, and despairingly, of ‘the
great architect, carefully kept for the purpose and guarded from
the common troubles of the common man.’ –Morris [23]
More than a century later, one can but echo his troubled
concern. And the roots of that concern have deepened since
his day. Architects are now locked in a seemingly unbreakable
corporate embrace; an envelopment that is tightening via information and communication technology, a clutch that threatens
further to consolidate designers’ disabling distance from the actual
production of buildings and from the real lives of building users,
the people.
Looking back to modernism
In a world of dislocated images, of recycled architectural pasts,
to remember is to resist. To resist is to reject the packaged
histories in current vogue. To insist on recall is to oppose the
cosy amnesia of the imported, the imposed building styles which
engulf us. To question this eclecticism is to seek our own histories.
But the questions press. Whose histories? Whose memories?
Answers do not come readily. Here, at the southern rim of Africa,
most people are dislocated from their pasts; some joyfully, others
reluctantly, yet others refusing the realities of displacement.
All are preoccupied with matters of identity – including
architectural identities.
Post–post-modern pastiche, the recent design mode, is offered
as a practice for, among other goals, gratifying people’s need
for a sense of belonging. Such an approach, the argument runs,
offers a way of repairing the damage resulting from modernist
practices; a way, supposedly, of affirming rather than denying the
past. In brief, post–modernists advocate turning from those who,
they claim, abandoned historical reference. Again the questions
are immediate: who or what is being jettisoned, how and in what
ways? Much has been said in response, particularly by critical
cultural theorists in the US and western Europe. This, to my
knowledge, has not been the case in southern Africa. Here, such
issues have, seemingly, eluded critical focus.
At this point, I must interject to make my stance explicit.
Architecture – as practice and as product – does not simply reflect
the societies in which it is produced. Buildings are not mere images
of what is, of how people live presently. Quite the contrary: via its
material presence as embodied human action, architecture can,
does speak of what might be, of how we might live. Appropriate
architectures ought, then, to help shape, to hone people’s desires.
This is far from being solely a matter of form, of style. During
the 19th century, engineers and architects were called on to
accommodate new social relationships in the new building types
they designed: factories, railway stations, public libraries... So,
South African designers are now being summoned to turn their
skills to the new spatial demands of their burgeoning democratic
society. Their tasks, their choices are by no means easy.
There are at least two modern architectures. The first appears in
scholarly books as works of inspiration; the outstanding buildings
of modernism which few see, let alone live or work in. These are
the avant garde buildings of the early 20th century – mainly in
Europe – when for the first time architects grappled with the
issues surrounding mass populations, industrial production,
technological innovation. This is an architecture of change;
a time of revolution, crumbling empires, social hope... of futures.
End piece
Charles Moore – library.
This is the architecture of the founders of the Modern Movement;
the dreams, made concrete, of a cultural elite. These are the buildings through which designers strained to express humane ideals.
What happened? In the ‘socialist’ East – rejection, expulsion,
exile; social content ripped from form, deformed. In the ‘free’
West – incorporation: an architecture of defeat, of aesthetic form
torn from social content. This, of course, is the second modern
architecture, the all too familiar one in which many live and work.
This is the segregated township, the suburb of individual, of social
isolation: neighbourhood without communality. This is rampant
urban growth, speculative development; banks, office parks,
finance houses... shopping malls. This is the new factory:
a fine-tooled envelope around a stripped, cheap interior
– packaged exploitation in a landscaped industrial park. This is
Speculator-Modern, the architecture of the international market:
inflated opulence for the few, pinched spaces, shoddy materials,
botched work for the rest. It is a rotten architecture. But then,
for most, it has been a rotten society. And the post–modernist
response? Well... architecture is about making architecture
popular, all the way to the bank.
Shifts in the global market of capital have been accompanied
by changes in the manner in which many aspects of culture have
been given material expression. In architecture and urban design,
this has been marked by an explicitly anti-modernist trajectory,
the thrust of post-modernism.
That is presented as, inter alia, a response to perceived
modernist ills: in particular, the posited failure to articulate local
senses of identity, to create vernacular ‘places’ to which people
are attached rather than universalistic ‘spaces’ that they occupy
passively. Post-modernism is proffered as an antidote to modernist
failures. It is presented as a cultural practice cleansed of utopian
aspirations. By-passing the determinedly social goals of many
modernists, post-modern designers claim to operate in what
they choose to depict as the realm of established, so-called
neutral aesthetics.
Accordingly, post-modern architectural and urban forms tend
to evoke, even to re-represent admired precedents. In the main,
these comprise serial repetitions of past models that are deemed
successful. In the post-modern lexicon, local identities are
universally experienced as being rooted in selected aspects
of European culture and history; particular emphasis is placed
on beaux arts readings from, say, ancient Greece, the Renaissance
and subsequent European neo-classicisms. These instances are
borrowed from the past to be hung on contemporary structures
with their up-to-date facilities, equipment and patterns of use.
A critique of the symbolic nostalgias of post-modern design
must, thus, be founded on recognising the specifically local
contexts in which designers work. What one need ask is, say,
post-modern neo-Georgian or Tudorbethan architecture in early
21st century South Africa? Whose memories do such buildings
stir, whose nostalgias do they gratify, whose cultural roots are
being acknowledged?
In these respects, current architectural and urban design
historicisms are undisguised expressions of consummate
alienation. They are symbols of not-belonging: those who
identify with them are not from here, from southern Africa.
Implicitly – and too frequently, explicitly – they yearn to be
elsewhere. Paradoxically, post-modern architecture represents
a desire to erase, to dismiss local senses of place. It is
imported, distinctively not-African.
Concluding comment
Most architects in South Africa are lost in unthinking postmodernist or, far worse, in routine post-post-modernist filching
from long-gone European styles and what are thought to be
exotic, ‘other’ architectures. A handful, usually the more analytic
and socially aware, are troubled by what is happening to their
profession. They are concerned about how, currently, this or
that feature of other architectures is being lifted out of context
to be dumped in unsuited circumstances; in conditions that are
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End piece
Uytenbogaardt Rozendal – stadium.
climatically, economically, socially inappropriate. In their efforts
to resist this, they struggle at the enormously complex task of
identifying what is genuinely local, what is loved and viable about
the ways of life and the built worlds in which they live. They
try to pinpoint, to study what is distinct about the buildings
that have helped shape their physical and cultural settings.
These are southern African practitioners who search for
architectures that are locally rooted. They are rare, their work
is scattered, its regional qualities not readily recognisable.
A caution: the few from whom we are able to draw examples
are predominantly white – like those accomplished, modernist,
designers Norman Eaton, Douglass Cowin and Roelof
Uytenbogaardt. The profession has been, and for the
present remains, confined to the middle classes of that
population group.
Pre-liberation figures (1993) indicate that of 2 480 thenregistered architects, 12 (0.48 percent) were black, of 1 454
students architects, 56 (3.85 percent) were black and of the
144 graduates that year, three (2.08 percent) were black.
(To my knowledge, divisively racial data of this nature is no
longer gathered or published.) That some among the dominant
group have cared about struggling for regional expressions is
a tribute to their sensitivity; especially as their colleagues’ eyes
have traditionally been, and even now remain, fixed on overseas.
To borrow a sentient phrase: it is a long walk to architectures
that are sensitively responsible, to designers who are actively
responsive to the people’s needs. And to invert Paul Klee’s
impassioned cry – the people seek such architectures. Where
but in our design-hungry, long-neglected countryside, where
but in our dishevelled townships, our informal settlements, are
these architectures and these designers in more urgent demand?
REFERENCES:
1 Coleridge cited in Russell Jacoby, The End of Utopia: Politics and Culture
in an Age of Apathy, Basic Books, New York, p. XIII.
2 Jacoby, ibid., XI-XII.
3 Theodor W Adorno (trans. E B Ashton), Negative Dialectics, Routledge
& Kegan Paul, London, 1973, p. 5.
4 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991,
64
ARCHITECTURE SOUTH AFRICA
Michael Joseph, London, 1994, pp. 4-5.
5 William Morris – taken from an unattributed exhibition poster.
6 Adorno, op. cit., pp. 17-18.
7 Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modern and Post-modern Architecture,’ 9H, 1982, 4: 9-14,
p.14.
8 Berthold Lubetkin, ‘Royal Gold Medal Address June 29 1982’ in John
Allen, Berthold Lubetkin: Architecture and the Tradition of Progress, RIBA
Publications, London, 1992, p. 587.
9 C Wright Mills, ‘Man in the Middle: The Designer,’ in I L Horowitz (ed), Power,
Politics and People: the Collected Essays of C Wright Mills, OUP, London, 1967,
p. 375.
10 Anatole Kopp, Constructivist Architecture in the USSR, Academy Editions,
London, 1985, p. 154.
11 Hans Schmidt, ‘The Soviet Union and Modern Architecture’ in El Lissitzky
(trans. Eric Dluhosch), Russia: An Architecture for World Revolution, Lund
Humphies, London, 1970, p. 221.
12 Eric Mendelsohn, ‘Architecture today,’ in Three Lectures on Architecture,
University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1944, p.24.
13 Paul Klee, On Modern Art, Faber and Faber, London, 1948, pp. 54-5.
14 Neil Leach, The Anaesthetics of Architecture, MIT Press, 1999, p.vii.
15 Kirsty Wark, From Here To Eternity, Open University, BBC2,
26 November 2001.
16 C Wright Mills , ‘Man in the Middle: The Designer’ in I. L. Horowitz (ed.),
Power, Politics and People: the Collected Essays of C Wright Mills, OUP, London,
1967, pp. 385-6.
17 Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic
and Social History, The Johns Hopkins University Press, London, 1980, p.396.
18 Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City States in Renaissance Italy,
Allen Lane, London, 1980, p. 381.
19 John Nash cited in Rodney Mace, Trafalgar Square: Emblem of Empire,
Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1976, p. 33.
20 Philip Johnson cited in Stephen Games, Behind the Façade, BBC, London,
1985, p. 94.
21 Paul Finch, ‘Prisoner of Gender of the Equality of Uncertainty’, in K Ruedi,
S Wigglesworth, D McCorquodale (eds.), Desiring Practices: Architecture,
Gender and the Interdisciplinary, Black Dog Publishing Ltd, London, 1996, p.136.
22 Howard Robertson cited in Paul Finch, ibid. p.136.
23 William Morris cited in Bill Risebero, The Story of Western Architecture,
Herbert Press, London, 2001, p.119.