August 19, 2005
By Lucille Davie
CAN you name seven Johannesburg buildings worthy of being featured in a Berlin exhibition reflecting the energy and optimism of Johannesburg? Chances are, you can't.
The exhibition, entitled "Fast Forward Johannesburg", featured the following buildings: the Constitutional Court in Braamfontein, the Metro Mall in downtown Joburg, the Bara Taxi Rank in Soweto, the Apartheid Museum in Ormonde, the Faraday Market and Transport Interchange in downtown Joburg, the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication in Kliptown, and Mandela's Yard Museum in Alexandra.
The curator of the exhibition, Dagmar Hoetzel, says: "The name refers to the energetic spirit of Johannesburg and conveys the dynamism and optimism with which Johannesburg is evolving, and shows how the city is embracing the challenges of transformation and growth."
The exhibition, held in March and April, took place at the Aedes East Gallery, the most well-known architecture gallery in Europe. Henning Rasmuss of sharpCITY co-curated the exhibition from Johannesburg.
While architecture in South African cities is an agglomeration of European styles - Cape Dutch, Victorian, Edwardian, Art Deco and more recently, Tuscan - Hoetzel was interested in exploring whether the new democratic order is being reflected in new buildings going up, particularly in Joburg.
Hoetzel feels that apartheid has had a profound effect on the country's architecture, and is still very evident. "In no other country does architecture and urban planning bear such vivid witness to history, to politics and to social division. And these deeply embedded traces of apartheid remain ubiquitous in South Africa today."
Apartheid buildings are almost always recognisable by their closed, exclusive nature, often imposing an uneasy presence difficult to ignore.
The new-style architecture is changing the feel of South African cities. In the exhibition booklet Lindsey Bremner, honorary professorial research fellow in architecture at Wits University, says, "Many who were confined by apartheid to townships and rural Bantustans, or to the countries beyond our borders, have converged on the streets of Johannesburg to claim its promise of a better life. Public space is being occupied in new ways."
Hoetzel has been visiting South Africa since 1996, keen to observe the "courageous undertaking of constructing a new country after the end of apartheid". She says that since she published an article on Joburg in a German architecture magazine in 1997, she has followed the progress of the city's architecture, noticing a change in recent years.
"Only in the recent past I saw something emerge which creates new space. And that is what the exhibition [was] about, not about a style or fashion but about a new culture of planning and building, which creates a new approach to architecture and space."
While some would argue that change in South African society is not happening fast enough, these new buildings epitomise a new, open society that caters for creative spaces that allow people to mingle freely in the midst of meaningful African artefacts instead of under Cape Dutch gables or Victorian broekie lace balconies.
Mphethi Morojele, an architect with mma architects, one of the firms represented in the exhibition, says of the new architecture, "It is more spatial than visual. The design space anticipates new ways of how people live. It reflects rural habits within an urban setting - a culture going through a transition."
He says this architecture is more open-ended, allowing a sense of identity with the space, or allowing for what he calls a "baggy space".
Constitutional Court
Perhaps the best example of this is the striking Constitutional Court (omm Design Workshop and Urban Solutions) on Constitution Hill. It is alongside apartheid's notorious No 4 prison and President Paul Kruger's 19th century Old Fort.
It is no coincidence that it resides alongside No 4, a prison dating back to the very early years of the city, over 100 years ago. No 4 was kept exclusively for black male prisoners, who were held there under brutal conditions. On the site too is the Women's Gaol, an elegant Edwardian building imprisoning women under equally inhuman conditions.
The imposing Dutch-inspired Old Fort housed white prisoners. It was initially used as a fort, although it never saw action.
These three apartheid reminders act as the perfect foil for the truly uplifting court building, a very uncourt-like structure. There is nothing formal or stuffy about it - its double volume foyer with angled mosaic pillars, artistic wire light fittings and funky orange couches set the tone for the 200-piece art gallery and people-friendly court room.
The entrance doors are huge wooden slabs, engraved in sign language by Durban craftspeople, depicting the 27 themes of the Bill of Rights.
The building has airy passages, with wooden-slat floors, looking out on tranquil pools, green lawns and indigenous trees. Each judge's chamber entrance has an individually crafted metal gate, with artworks lining the walls leading to the chambers.
In a subtle blend of the old and the new, elements of apartheid structures, like the rich red bricks from the demolished awaiting-trial building, have been used in the interior of the court room, and on the New African Steps, a walkway between No 4 and the court building.
The mix of red brick, bare grey concrete, stone, glass, mosaic and wood finishes combines with the artworks to produce a pleasing, welcoming effect, worthy of the court and what it stands for.
Paul Wygers, an architect at Urban Solutions, one of the consultants on the project, says of the court, "The building needs to be as active as possible - the court will not be a monument, it will be a people-inviting place."
What lingers in the mind walking around the court and the prisons is that two of the 20th century's greatest fighters for human rights, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, were incarcerated in No 4.
Apartheid Museum
Built in 2003, the Apartheid Museum (GAPP Architects, Mashabane Rose Architects, Britz/Roodt, Linda Mvusi Architects) sits incongruously alongside the amusement park and casino of Gold Reef City, whose owners paid R100-million to build the museum as part of their social responsibility obligations.
The harsh, stark contours of stone, rusted and galvanised steel, red brick, wood, glass and concrete of the Apartheid Museum are utterly appropriate for capturing the history of apartheid.
The exterior of the museum is dominated by grey, concrete walls and metal, with seven bare pillars of freedom rising into the sky, in sharp contrast to the green field and small lake alongside the museum.
The concrete theme continues inside the building, with smooth grey walls and concrete floors, offset by minimal windows. The display rooms consist of tall halls, circular silo-type rooms, smaller low-roofed rooms and two windowless prison cells. They provide a perfect backdrop for the multitude of monitors continuously showing apartheid newsreels and interviews, and striking displays like 121 nooses hanging from the ceiling, representing the number of political prisoners hanged during apartheid.
"This is a minimalist building reflecting the fact that apartheid buildings were born of incarceration," says project co-ordinator and architect Sidney Abramowitch. "We wanted to reflect the harshness, crudity and horror of apartheid. We wanted something so different because apartheid was so different."
The visitor weaves a route inside and outside the museum, taking in the history of apartheid, and constantly bombarded by sight and sound.
The curatorial team was appointed before construction began and the building contractor appointed while designing was still in progress, in a unique collaborative effort to mould the two teams' thinking along the way.
All communities in the country were consulted, from groups in the Richtersveld in the far Northern Cape, including the San bushmen, to groups in the far south, says Abramowitch. In all the projects displayed in Berlin, relevant communities were consulted.
A visit to the museum leaves one with indelible flashes of apartheid and its effects on the nation, captured not only by the images in the museum but by the powerful architecture.
Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication
The Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication (studioMAS architects) is only half complete. However, it is clearly going to add significantly to Joburg's collection of post-democracy 21st century architecture.
Erected on the original soccer-field-sized square that in June 1955 was the meeting place of the Congress of the People, assembled to ratify the Freedom Charter, the new square is seeped in symbolism.
It consists of two squares, one symbolising the old apartheid South Africa, the other the new, democratic South Africa. The latter square is made up of nine blocks, representing the nine provinces, and decorated with crosses, symbolic of the first democratic votes placed on ballot papers.
A winding snake pathway will be built between the two squares, a reminder of the snaking queues of voters in 1994.
At the northern end of the pathway is a tall tower on the north side, referred to as the Freedom Charter Monument. A flame, inside the tower and called the Flame of Freedom, was lit by President Thabo Mbeki on 26 June 2005, on the 50th anniversary of the 1955 event. The roof of the tower is cut in an X shape, the "mark of freedom".
The tower is conical, a classical African shape - evidenced in the Great Zimbabwe ruins and traditional African fishing baskets. Opposite this tower is a cyclindrical tower that will contain a "kwashisanyama", an isiZulu word meaning "a place to prepare food".
The square will also make allowance for upwards of 600 hawker stalls, largely along its southern border, in and around the preserved first shops along Union Street.
With the square the architects are making a statement: this is a square in Africa, where hawkers are integral to life, where cooking is done in an open area, where shapes are reminiscent of long-held traditions and where the African sun shines brightly in wide expanses of sky.
Pierre Swanepoel, the founder of StudioMAS, says of the new style of architecture, "It consists of buildings for the people by the people. We are different people with different economic realities."
Mandela Yard
Mandela Yard (Peter Rich Architects) is in recognition of Nelson Mandela's early foray into the city in the 1940s. It is also the first real acknowledgement of the community of Alexandra, one of the city's oldest freehold townships for blacks, yet now a squalid, overcrowded ghetto, progressively neglected over many decades.
The Mandela Yard Interpretation Centre is directly opposite the backroom occupied by Mandela, where he lived for his first year in the city. Still under construction, it consists of a three-level steel structure, containing shops, restaurants, training facilities, a jazz archive, library facilities, an interpretation walkway and two piazzas.
Built over Hofmeyer Street, the building takes in two street corners. Visitors will be able to move through it, viewing exhibitions telling the story of the lives of Alex residents, and cross over the bridge, getting elevated views of the township through large windows.
Architect Peter Rich says there was extensive community consultation prior to the finalisation of the plan. "This is the first time the people's voice will be heard."
Only residents will be allowed to take up stall and restaurant space. In addition, 10 Alexandrans have been identified as potential members of a heritage team.
The simplicity of the architecture echoes the small Alexandra houses, particularly in the provision of public spaces. Backyards are an integral feature of the houses, often with attached seating against the walls of the structures. This feature, says Rich, is reminiscent of structures in rural areas that allow easy "socialising space" in a central area.
Of the new African architecture, he says, "Apartheid didn't produce public spaces of note. The new style is trying to re-invent those spaces."
Faraday Market and Transport Interchange
It seems apt that minibus taxis and traditional healers share the same space in this market on the south-western edge of the city - one is very much a feature of large cities, the other a long-entrenched feature of African life, easily transported into the city and used by even the most sophisticated city dwellers.
Stalls spill out into the public walkways
The market section of the Faraday Market and Transport Interchange (Albonico Sack Mzumara Architects, mma architects) consists of a series of small open halls, divided into 280 separate stalls with pull-down doors, and open spaces planted with striking, indigenous coral trees. There are also consulting rooms available for healers, with attached bathrooms, used for ritual cleansing purposes. The doors of the consulting rooms are low, forcing customers to bend to enter, a sign of respect to the healer.
Stalls spill out into the passageways with an amazing array of dried herbs, roots of all shapes and sizes and dozens of bright blue packets of bark, laid out on the ground. The pungent smell that emanates from the market comes from the plant matter and from the range of dried animal organs, skulls and whole small animals like rock rabbits, or even complete donkey legs.
The corrugated iron rooftops of the market, held up by steel girders, are constructed in wave-like shapes, providing a sense of being in the veld, with its pleasing rolling hills, in contrast to the angular shapes of the surrounding factories and warehouses.
The tall roofs allow sunlight to stream in; the hard-wearing, simple materials allow the earthiness of the traders' goods to be appreciated to the fullest.
Metro Mall and the Bara Taxi Rank
Both buildings, the Metro Mall (Urban Solutions) in the Joburg city centre and the Bara Taxi Rank (Urban Solutions) in the heart of Soweto, have the same purpose: to cater for a transport and trader terminal in a people-friendly way, by providing spaces to traders which allow them to maximise the passing trade.
Both have been created to be hard-wearing and low maintenance, using robust materials like red face brick and concrete finishes.
The Metro Mall, on three levels and taking a whole block, is designed to accommodate 25 buses serving 35 different routes, with holding facilities for 2 000 taxis, servicing an estimated 100 000 commuters. There is space for about 800 traders, inside the building and along the ground floor exterior in Bree and Sauer streets.
The impressive double volume entrances, decorated by local artists in mosaic and tall wooden sculptures, act as "collection baskets" to draw people into its interior.
A range of items is on sale in colourful stalls: fresh fruit, spices, cellphones, kitchenware and for non-commuters or commuters with a longer wait, pool tables.
In this building, the architects strove to create a mixed-use structure that blends with city buildings in the vicinity, allowing easy access and freedom of movement inside it. The building has also turned a rapidly deteriorating side of the city into a vibrant, people place, at the same time providing a formal home for both taxis and traders.
The architects say in their information brochure, "The Metro Mall is a demonstration of the passion with which all stakeholders, from client to trader representatives, have addressed the challenges in making a building of civic pride."
The challenge in the brief for the architects of the Bara Taxi Rank was to allow space for buses, taxis and informal traders, at a bustling intersection - directly opposite the largest hospital in the country, the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. It is situated along the township's main arterial, Old Potchefstroom Road, a thoroughfare that carries 35 000 vehicles each day.
Over a four-year period, agreement with all the parties concerned was reached. Construction started in 2004, and will continue until 2006, in five phases.
The rank stretches over 1,3 kilometres, with a width of 50 metres, with landmark towers, decorated with mosaic by local artists, marking the entrances. More than 70 percent of Soweto commuters use this interchange.
Previously, traders and taxi drivers jostled for space outside the hospital, with tourist buses increasingly adding to the space pressure.
The rank can hold 500 taxis in holding bays, with 160 taxi loading bays, 35 long-distance taxi loading bays and 20 bus bays. There is space for 500 traders, with stalls of varying sizes. Commuters can walk along a long, concrete-pillared arcade that runs the length of the site, along which traders are positioned.
The unfinished concrete look of the complex provides a utilitarian atmosphere, broken by brightly coloured entrances, landmarks for the rank. Its openness allows for plenty of "baggy space".
Says Hoetzel of the exhibition, "The response was very good. It was well reviewed by national and international magazines and newspapers." Between 8 500 and 9 000 people visited it, she adds.
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