February 20, 2006
By Neil Fraser
WAY back in October 2003, Time Out London, usually the first publication I buy when arriving in Britain, published an article by Robert Elms entitled "My own ugly list of monstrous edifices".
Elms is clearly a man of strong opinions – his "ugliest, most irritating building in all of London is the Globe Theatre – it's no surprise that this whole sorry exercise was carried out and pushed through by an American, for that place is the most pathetic example of a sugar-coated, Disneyfied view of London. Fake, twee, theme park architecture which is an insult to the mighty twenty-first century city it sits in."
Some of the others on his list included St Pancras, "an overrated Gothic mess"; Minster House, "a neo-Gothic fantasy which looks like it was designed by the Black Sabbath fan club"; the MTV building in Camden Town, "a very silly example of 1980s excess"; two buildings on Hampstead Road, one owned by BHS, "the one adjoining it has no sign of ownership, which is no surprise as I'd be ashamed to be associated with such an offensive pile"; Number One Poultry, "James Stirling's jumbled piece of postmodern verbiage"; Baynard's House, "truly offensive"; and the Tower Thistle Hotel, "squats like a sullen sumo".
On a later trip to the United Kingdom, I read of a television series in the making that was asking viewers "to nominate the country's worst building in an architectural ugliness pageant". The inspiration for the series came from a comment by the then president of the Royal Institute of British Architects who had suggested that the "most vile buildings should be given a grade X listing to speed up their destruction".
The series, called Demolition followed an earlier series called Restoration, and was aiming to acquire the country's worst building in order to demolish it. A later series would cover the construction of a replacement building.
The Brits really know how to produce stimulating programmes – we seem able only to copy other countries' television initiatives, usually rather badly. But what about having a series on the best and worst of South African architecture? Last year, Professor Ora Joubert, head of architecture at Pretoria University said, "with far too few exceptions, current South African architecture is [among] the worst of its kind".
For what it is worth, my three absolute worst buildings in Joburg's inner city and its immediate surrounds, not necessarily in order of intensity of dislike – and I'm not going to compete with Robert Elms comment-wise – are: the Joburg General Hospital, a grey concrete monolith, acting as a barrier to itself and what lies beyond it; the Central Divorce Court at the western end of Market Street, not one single redeeming feature, a prime example of "nothing architecture"; and, to show that I am not picking on public buildings, the "Diamond" building in Diagonal Street – it might look good in Chicago, the home of its architect, but how could anyone design a building that is so totally foreign to the country and the city it was built in?
Drop me an email with your worst and best buildings.
The list of my most loved Joburg buildings, which contains quite a few and is perhaps a topic for another time, is headed without any doubt by the Constitutional Court building on Constitution Hill. My own feelings regarding the building are echoed in the words of Alan Lipman, "The building is magnificent, imaginative, inspiring, life-enhancing, a vindication of careful, gifted design."
I have been taking visitors there literally dozens of times over the past two years and I never cease to be thrilled and moved by so many aspects of this building. For me it represents the "Hope of the Future", sited as it is among four jails collectively representing the evils, injustices and indignities of our past – the Fort, the Women's Jail, the Awaiting Trial Block (although substantially demolished, its memory lives on) and Number Four, the infamous "Native Jail".
Now a book has been published about Constitution Hill, simply titled Number Four – The Making of Constitution Hill. Lauren Segal, who kindly gave me a copy of the book on Wednesday and in which I've had my nose firmly stuck ever since, managed the production with an editorial team comprising Graeme Reid, Brian Orlin, Tshepo Nkosi, Mark Gevisser, Steve Kwena Mokwena, Herbert Prins and Mike Freedman.
It is a must-have for every Joburger – I believe it is already on the shelves of Exclusive Books.
Peter Stark's incisive "Notes towards a concept design" provides a wonderful introduction to the journey on which the book takes you. It starts in 1893, with Paul Kruger's decision to build a high-security prison on a strategic hill overlooking the then mining village in an attempt to maintain control over the uitlanders.
It takes us through 1896, when the buildings were turned into a military fort following the Jameson Raid (and includes some remarkable pictures of these early times); 1904, when the Native prison, Number Four, was built; 1910, the Women's Jail; 1928, the Awaiting Trial block; 1964 and the controversial naming of the fort as a national monument; 1983 and the removal of all prisoners to the new Diepkloof Prison; 1994 and the establishment of the Constitutional Court as an entirely new court by the interim Constitution; the choice of the site in 1996; the design competition culminating in 1998 with the winning submission by OMM Design Workshop in partnership with Urban Solutions; the construction of the court, and its official opening on Human Rights Day, 21 March 2004.
Along the way, woven through these milestones, the journey is personalised through the many quotes from those who were incarcerated in the site's jails, starkly bringing to life the sheer scale of the inhumanity practiced behind their walls. Personalised too through the words of those associated with the Constitutional Court's design and construction and including those of artists, judges and critics.
The HET team (heritage, education and tourism) takes one on many side-roads, important to grasp, as the history of the site is peeled back through various initiatives – the exhibitions; the "We the People" campaign; the visits by ex-prisoners; and ultimately, the responses to what has been created.
It is a great journey, intensely moving and painful, yet joyful in what has been achieved and always looking forward to where we are going, an attitude poignantly summed up by one of its prisoners – Nelson Mandela: "You must know your past and the cruelty that was committed to your people. But don't keep this too much in mind because we are here to build a new South Africa. That is what you must commit yourselves to. You must remember what has happened in the past so that, in future, you can avoid it."
The journey provides many lessons and provides a framework for all work of this kind. Sadly, we seem to forget such lessons quicker than we learn them.
Regards, Neil
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