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JOURNAL OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS

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IN ARCHITECTURE, AS IN EVERY FIELD, CONSERVATION pro-vokes controversy. On one hand, an understanding of history is absolutely necessary to people’s individual and collective identity. How we value family heirlooms, granny’s ring and the house where we were born! And how much effort we put collectively to looking after the customs and places of our history – and showing them off to outsiders! In a country where a large part of our history has been ignored or destroyed, it is very important to dig it up, make it visible, honour it and conserve it – for our collective identity. Even apart from the issue of identity, there is no doubt that one of the great joys of existence is to live among the depths of cultural history. The new may excite and fulfil a sense of achievement, but on its own it is shallow – as any experience of a new town will show. Accessible historical layering, with its opportunities for educa-tion, comparison and interpretation, makes for urbane living. And especially fine things that encourage us and fascinate us with their demonstration of the greatness of human capacity.

But conserving cultural capital does not mean being conservative about it. Conditions change – traditional customs, needs and ways of using space become irrelevant. Culture changes and if it is prevented from doing so, as happens in every conservative, authoritarian regime, one of the most es-sential parts of being human, to be always searching for the new, the better, the more appropriate, is stifled.

The dualism between the imperative to conserve and to change makes every alteration to old fabric of our cities controversial. A balanced position is essential – of which the first vital component is neutrality. The other’s heritage is as valuable as mine; a building of a style that does not appeal, is as important as my favourite. In the 1960s we were taught that Victo-rian (apart from the Crystal Palace) was eclectic and despicable, and many fine buildings of the era were demolished. Today, Victorian is admired and post-war New Empiricism is despised. Thus we battle with heritage of-ficials to let us put a dormer in a 1900 roof where the architect would have been quite happy to do so himself, but are witness to the philistine de-facing/refacing of buildings such as Roy Kantorowich’s Broadway on the Foreshore, an exemplar of the New Empiricism.

The second component is authenticity. To keep a façade intact and entirely gut and renew the interior, is to conserve history in a meaning-less way: it is to suggest that the meaning of exterior and interior are not profoundly connected. When valuable old buildings are altered or added to, old and new must be seen in relation to each other, in dialogue. Carlo Scarpa got it right. He believed that many of the same questions that con-cerned the builders of the past remain today – it is merely the answer that changes. His work exemplifies an effort to make a dialogue with history, to accumulate an intimate knowledge of historical ideas and to reinter-pret them in ways appropriate to our time and technology. This way, every generation can add to the deep narrative of history in its own way, while conserving the ways of previous generations.

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CONTENTS EDITOR’S NOTES01 CONSERVATION/CONSERVATIVISM Julian Cooke

NOTES AND NEWS05 AN ARCHITECTURAL LINE OF THOUGHT Basil Brink

06 LETTERS: ARCHITECTURE TODAY Andrew Makin and Jo Noero

HERITAGE08 HOUSE ZEEMAN, PRETORIA Architect: Earthworld Architects

12 FREE STATE LEGISLATURE (4TH RAADZAAL), BLOEMFONTEIN

Architect: The Roodt Partnership Anton Roodt

18 JOHANNESBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY – PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Architect: Jonathan Stone B Hart and KA Munro, University of the Witwatersrand

23 ST CYPRIAN’S GIRLS’ SCHOOL Architect: Noero Wolff Jo Noero

30 WERDMULLER CENTRE Ilze and Heinrich Wolff

HISTORICAL/REFEREED ARTICLE38 VOORTREKKER MONUMENT, WINBURG Architect: Hallen & Dibb, Durban, 1964-8 Walter Peters

TECHNICAL48 OZMIK HOUSE, PRETORIA Jacques Laubscher

PERSPECTIVE51 SLUMDWELLERS Nic Coetzer

END PIECE55 THE ‘HERITAGE EFFECT’ Noëleen Murray, University of the Western Cape

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AN ARCHITECTURAL LINE OF THOUGHT

A RECENT RE-READING of pre-vious issues of Architecture South Africa uncovered Nic Coetzer’s Perspective piece ‘Sitting on the fence’ (January/February 2010:59), in which he as-serts that an architect’s line on plan sets things apart, and recalls walking on top of segregating vibracrete boundary fenc-es as a youngster. Coetzer’s perspective on the segregating nature of an archi- tect’s line sparked memories of my first year in Archi School at UCT in 1970.

The late Roelof Uytenbogaardt and Dennis Playdon (now Professor of Ar-chitecture, Temple University, Philadel-phia) were our first year studio masters, and I used to approach whoever was free for guidance in my attempt at the design of a camp in the Cape Peninsula’s Silver-mine Nature Reserve. Both Roelof and Dennis had Parker fountain pens. After removing the gold cap and placing it on the back of the pen for balance, they would begin to draw flowing black lines at times interspersed with regularly-spaced dots, which I came to realise represented contours and columns. Roe-lof would include a conceptual section while saying ‘...always design in plan and in section’, making his beautiful lines, charged with implicit meaning, easier for a spoon-fed matriculant like me to make sense of.

Co-inspirers of the class of ’70 were Derek Revington (now an Associate Pro-fessor in the School of Architecture, Uni-versity of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario), Shirley Blumberg (neé Katz, a founding partner of Kuwabara, Payne, McKenna and Blumberg Architects, Toronto), Charl Roux (a Cape Town-based architect) and the late Wilhelm Hahn, who taught at Wits Archi School and the University of Texas. However, the class (I believe I was the only exception) thought itself less fortunate to have Michael Rosenz-

BY BASIL BRINK

weig (now an internationally renowned composer, conductor and jazz musician) along for the first-year ride. Michael did not endear himself to his classmates when he ‘borrowed’ their erasers or com-passes without returning them during Dean Anderson’s drawing assignments in the studio.

Prophetically for the RDP houses to come, Michael referred to ‘Patterns Generated by Houses’, in counterpoint to Christopher Alexander’s architec-tural ‘bible’, Houses Generated by Pat-terns. To the added chagrin of the class, Michael remained unfazed by the gen-eral antipathy towards him. He played it by ear (brilliantly on guitar), and accom-panied the pennywhistles of the Kwêla Kids on flute. Fortunately for us, Michael did not take the Pied Piper route by leading antagonistic architectural stu-dent ‘rats’ to the sea across the wind-swept Cape Flats.

Roelof singled out Michael’s three-dimensional conceptual diagram of the camp for high praise. Michael’s fettucini of multi-coloured paper ribbons explod-ing out of a geometry-defying balsa wood frame, with some of the balsa members extending into distant space, was presci-ent of Deconstruction.

Wilhelm and Derek competed to produce ever more beautiful site analy-sis studies – some thought these pastel drawings to be works of art, while oth-ers (the jealous ones?) called the fruits of their competitive production ‘analy-sis paralysis’. Wilhelm, who took Art as a matric subject, introduced me to the 1968 English edition of Paul Klee’s 1925 Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch (Pedagogi-cal Sketchbook), one of fourteen Bauhaus Books edited by Walter Gropius and Laslo Moholy-Nagy.

Coetzer’s call for ‘dotty-mania’, where architects double-check opportunities

for connections between the incremen-tally progressing dots forming the ‘seg-regating’ line, made me reach for the Pedagogical Sketchbook. In her introduc-tion to the book, Sybil Moholy-Nagy amplifies Klee’s ‘Theoretical Instruction’ on the line:

‘The line, being successive dot progression, walks, circumscribes, creates passive-blank and active-filled planes. Line rhythm is meas-ured like a musical score or an arithmetical problem. Gradually, line emerges as the meas-ure of all structural proportion, from Euclid’s Golden Section ... to the energetic power lines of ligaments and tendons, of water currents and plant fibers.’ (Moholy-Nagy 1968:9)

As Roelof and Dennis did at times, Klee takes his ‘active line on a walk, moving freely, without a goal. A walk for a walk’s sake. The mobility agent is a point, shifting its position forward.’ (Klee 1968:16)

Klee accompanies his active line with free-flowing complementary forms or has the line circumscribing itself. Intro-ducing the concept of the imaginary and invisible line, Klee conceptualises an imaginary main line with two second-ary visible lines moving, oscillating and dancing around it (Klee 1968).

Moholy-Nagy (1968:63) expands on the ‘line in action’, which she believes to be the beacon that guides Klee through his adventures in seeing, in a concluding note:

‘Line as planar definition, as mathemati-cal proportion, as co-ordinator for the path of motion, as optical guide, as optical reason, as psychological balance, as energy projec-tion, as symbol of centrifugal and centripetal movement, as symbol of will and infinity, and finally line as symbol of colour mutations and kinetic harmony.’

Coetzer commenced his piece by asserting that ‘Architects are great segre-gators. Each line drawn on a plan is an

emphatic statement of boundary. What is inside and what is out, what is included and what is excluded ... Even the many architects who tried and continue to try ... to overcome the segregated spatiality of apartheid face the conundrum of us-ing the segregating line as the means to achieve this. (Coetzer 2010:59)

Should architects be called on to draw each ‘segregating’ line with extreme cau-tion? If they decide to abandon their attempt to do so because this constrains creativity, should they then guiltily or ashamedly flagellate themselves in the privacy of their studios? Is it not more likely that the truly segregating line nestles cosily on the drawings of other

built environment professionals? For example, the railway line expressly aligned by an engineer to form a barrier between races then, or different income groups now, remains an instrument of segregation. The town planner and land surveyor’s layout and boundary lines of remote ‘townships’ then, or RDP hous-ing estates now, contributed significantly to the making of the apartheid city then and continue to segregate now.

Coetzer’s assertion that the line sets things apart opens up a new opportuni-ty for architects who did the bidding of the apartheid regime from 1948 to 1994. They can now attempt to exonerate themselves and regain the high ground

of political correctness by grasping their newly discovered life-line: ‘It wasn’t me, it was the line’s fault. As an architect, I had no choice. I had to use the line – it is the most useful “tool” in my “toolbox”. The line is guilty. It sets things apart, segregates and divides, not me. Do you really think...’ and so on. If this excuse fails to convince, could these architects introduce ‘I have dotty-mania!’ as an in-sanity plea?

REFERENCESKlee, P. 1968. Pedagogical Sketchbook. London: Faber and Faber paper-covered edition.

Moholy-Nagy, S. 1968. ‘Introduction’ and ‘A concluding note’, Pedagogical Sketchbook. Lon-don: Faber and Faber paper-covered editions.

ARCHITECTURE | SA 6|

A KEY ATTRIBUTE of being alive is change. In a lifetime, this means adapta-tion, responsiveness, growth and matura-tion. In epochs, it means evolution. Evolu-tion is the energising potential of species – thrilling, fuelling and focusing.

2007 was the first year that more than 50% of the world’s population lived in cities. What’s really stunning about this fact is that it is the first time in the history of life, since we were amoebae perhaps, that this has happened: it is the first time that the majority of us live in a habitat we have made, rather than one from which we have evolved.

For all of life, change in habitat is a primary driver for evolution. Things that influence this habitat are therefore, by accident or purpose, now primary influencers of our evolution. This is us. There has never been a better time to be an urbanist and architect. The question of education is of what kind of habitat we think the human species will best evolve in going forward from this immeasurably significant moment; which habitat will enable the progressive

LETTERS: ARCHITECTURE TODAY

achievement of our infinite potential? This potential is what makes us human. The question of urban and architec-tural practice is exactly the same, but with the opportunity and responsibility of implementation. Every project is re-search into this question. Behind every project is the question, not of what it is, but what it will do. Its being is in the service of its purpose.

Urban and architectural education and practice should focus on the immense in-herent intelligence accumulated over the lifetime of life itself, and on doing what we do, not what other people do, like ad-vertising agencies. We are the agency of habitat. Urbanists and architects should only bear this name if we are experts at it. No one else is. If we do it right, if there is significant, measurable, meaningful and real progress from what we do, there will be no end to the demand for us.

RESPONSEJo NoeroMy difference with what you say is that you seem to confuse architectural

action with political engagement. I be-lieve that one of the greatest blunders recently is people’s confused under-standing of the limits of architectural action. Please don’t confuse this with supporting the idea of architecture as neutral or of acting unethically as an architect. Architectural ethics resides in the nature of the brief accepted and acted upon by the architect. Beyond that architecture is inanimate and can-not possess either an ethical or moral dimension. That it can possess symbol-ic meaning, easily lifted by the actions of new actors on its spaces, can be seen clearly in the Union Buildings.

I believe that you are asking too much of architecture to take on the kinds of roles that you ask for it and for the archi-tect. Architecture is the art and science of building and has natural built-in limits. We need to recognise these limits and act accordingly, but always within an ethical framework of action.

The failure of modern architec-ture could be said to reside in the in-ability of most architects to know how to make ethical decisions, which has led to the awful cities and spaces that we occupy in our everyday lives. (This response has been considerably shortened.)

Andrew Makin: designworkshop : sa (see J Noero, Architecture SA March/April 2012)

Architecture19_next.indd 1 2012/04/29 08:58:10 PM

HOUSE ZEEMAN, PRETORIAARCHITECT EARTHWORLD ARCHITECTS

PROJECT ARCHITECT ANDRÉ EKSTEEN

THE PROJECT WAS to add a main bedroom (en suite), re-design the kitchen and add an outdoor living area. Apart from some minor alterations done previously, the conversion of the old service entrance on the west into a bathroom, and the conversion of the garage into a guest room, the house was in its original condition.

A major problem that presented itself was the isolated kitchen that merely

served as a service space in the back of the house. It was also cold, with no solar access. For the clients, who are enthusiastic entertainers, this was the complete opposite of what they regarded as the most important requirement for their new home. They made it very clear that they didn’t want to change the existing structure, as it represented all they loved in terms of the lifestyle they had become used to, living in an historic

home on a farm just outside Pretoria. A subtle re-interpretation was required.

The basic scheme was to convert the existing main bedroom into a kitchen, and add a new main bedroom and a veranda, which would also become a unifying element linking the old and new structures.

A ‘floating concrete block’ that doesn’t touch the original structure was added to become the main bedroom.

Clients Daan and Liza Zeeman were charmed by this early 20th-century Baker School residence, and even though it presented some major functional problems, they saw the potential and immediately purchased the property.

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Utilising frameless glass walls reduced the materiality of the links of the new work to the existing structure.

The site was sub-divided in the 1980s, leaving little ‘breathing space’ for the building. Corners were opened up to enhance the link to the outside, thus realising the latent potential of the garden to become an extension of the home. A timber veranda, slightly overlapping the existing structure, is bolted to it, and the veranda projects into the garden, drawing in the natural landscape. The timeless quality of the building is further enhanced by the honest use of natural materials. Stan-dard lengths of laminated saligna, bolted together, minimise waste and improve recyclability. The ‘bedroom box’ was cast with self-compacting concrete, which provides an extremely smooth finish and reduces maintenance considerably.

The subtle, and yet contemporary intervention will enhance the timeless quality of a beautiful structure, while providing the much-needed existential interface the clients required.

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FREE STATE LEGISLATURE, BLOEMFONTEINBY ANTON ROODT

ARCHITECT: THE ROODT PARTNERSHIP

The fourth Raadzaal was recently comprehensively refurbished over a 12-month period. The internal finishes were damaged by water leaks, rising damp and, in one instance, fire. Furthermore, in order to function as the Council Chamber of the Free State Legislature, certain adjustments were necessary that inter alia include new air-conditioning, audio-visual equipment and furniture. In

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A BRIEF HISTORYIn 1882 the Volksraad of the Free State Republic decided to advertise their in-tentions to erect a new Government House, as well as a Council Chamber. The ensuing architectural competition drew no less than 50 entries from Eng-land, Holland, Austria, Germany and the USA. A local architect, Francis Len-nox Canning, practising in Queenstown, won both competitions.

It was only in 1889 that the economic climate improved to the extent that Canning was contacted in connection with the drawings for the proposed new Raadzaal. The political scenario in the Free State had changed during the intervening period and a new President, FW Reitz, took the place of Sir JH Brand, who had passed away.

The surviving copies of Lennox Canning’s drawings showed an extremely

simple plan, symmetrical along the east-west axis. The west-facing entrance is emphasised by a grand portico leading into a centrally placed, circular lobby, surmounted by a dome. The Council Chamber is a rectangular space of approximately 15m x 30m. On the east side of the building a number of offices and meeting rooms are arranged. The Raadzaal itself is an impressive, lofty space – somewhat dark as was the

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fashion of the day – with stained glass windows on the north, south and east façades. The north and south façades of the building are emphasised by large, 10m-high sandstone columns. The building is constructed with red clay bricks and sandstone in combination. The volumes and massing of the build-ing are strong and simple, with a domed portico creating an elegant and dignified appearance on Pres Brand Street. As with many other historical buildings in this street, the fourth Raadzaal is also situated in a park-like landscape. The building has a distinct character with calm and quiet interiors. The spaces are generous, beautiful and awe-inspiring. The building plan, however, is inflexible. This has meant that little or no changes to the accommodation were or could be made over the years. The building is furthermore noteworthy for its consistent use of ornament, as well

as the high standard of craftsmanship that was employed on some of the finishes of the building. The furniture was especially designed for the building by the architect.

In 1907 the government architect Taylor designed an addition to the east of the fourth Raadzaal in a similar style and constructed with sandstone. This was to accommodate the Legislative Council of the Orange River Colony.

CONSERVATION STRATEGYThe conservation strategy is firstly based on developing a shared understanding of the building, and included the following activities:• Documentary evidence, mainly based

on archival sources• Gathering physical evidence by

means of surveying• Co-ordinating and analysing evidence• Assessing cultural significance

Hereafter, a number of conservation goals were formulated based on the typical areas of change that buildings experience throughout their lifetimes (Brand in Roodt Partnership, 2007). These are: site, structure, skin, services, space plan and stuff. Based on the gathered evidence, a set of policies relating to these areas of change were formulated, to allow Public Works and building users to deal sensibly with matters relating to each. For example, the roof structure and roofs should remain unaltered, but quarterly inspections to clean gutters and downpipes should be undertaken. Water is probably the most important enemy of any building, particularly in this case, where there are numerous hidden gutters, downpipes within roof space, and so on.

One of the most important factors ensuring the ongoing maintenance, refurbishment and restoration of the

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structure is the fact that it has been the seat of government almost continuously since its completion in 1892. With the proposed new legislature building at the site of the Ramkraal Prison near Batho, the building will lose its original function and therefore some of its cultural significance. Finding a suitable adaptive re-use will be vital in ensuring its continued survival.

SCOPE OF WORKPrior to the refurbishment programme, the building was only partially occu-pied by the legislature, and the ancillary rooms and spaces were not used after office space was rented elsewhere in the city. There was a lack of maintenance, especially of gutters and downpipes, which are easily blocked by pigeon- droppings. In combination with rainwa-ter, this caused severe water leaks that damaged fragile ceilings, mouldings and

especially the purpose-made furniture. After dealing with the rainwater drain-age system and waterproofing, the rest of the building fabric and its contents were tackled. A major undertaking was the repair of the wood graining – a paint technique that imitates exotic wood finishes. An artist, Johan Baden-horst, executed this work. He had pre-viously worked as a set painter for the erstwhile PACOFS. The damaged fur-niture was inspected by an expert, Alta Kriel from Cape Town, who recom-mended specialist Kroonstad cabinet-maker Hans Ekkehard for its repair and restoration. All surfaces were redeco-rated and a special carpet was made for the Debating Chamber. State-of-the- art audiovisual equipment was installed. A number of committee rooms were created using contemporary furniture and lighting. Externally, the stonework was cleaned comprehensively with

high-pressure water hoses by Gordon, Verhoef and Krause. The aim was not to remove the patination, but rather to deal with atmospheric pollution.

CONCLUSIONThis project demonstrates how valu-able cultural capital can be. The build-ing was refurbished and functionally upgraded to contemporary standards for a fraction of the cost of a new faci-lity. Old buildings need more love and care, but in many ways have more to offer than their younger but more frivolous successors.

REFERENCESRoodt, A.J. 1990. Die Argitektoniese Bydrae van Francis Lennox Canning – 1884–1895. Unpublished M.Arch Thesis. Bloemfon-tein: UFS

Roodt Partnership, 2007. Bloemfontein: ‘Revised Report on the Fourth Raadzaal’.

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JOHANNESBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY – PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE In 2012 the City of Johannesburg proudly reopened its City Library, a heritage building that has been redeveloped and reshaped by the Johannesburg architect, Jonathan Stone. The result is a thoughtful re-conceptualisation of the older 1935 Johannesburg Public Library by Cape Town architect John Perry.

ARCHITECT JONATHAN STONEBY B HART AND KA MUNRO, SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND

THE JOHANNESBURG LIBRARY, located on the old Market Square site be-tween President and Market Street, in a very short time after its opening, had be-come a beloved, if somewhat prematurely conservative institution. Many Johannes-burg citizens will remember its pleasures, the spacious reference library, newspaper room and children’s section. The institu-tion was an odd combination of Library, Geological and Africana Museums, and it housed the Library Theatre, for many years the City’s premier theatre.

EARLIER LIBRARY HISTORYA Johannesburg public subscription li-brary dates back to 1889 and the council took over the old Kerk Street Library in 1924. Finally, in 1929, there was a discus-sion about building a new library. The City Council decided to go the route

of a competition so as to attract the best South African architectural talent. Forty-six schemes were submitted. John Perry, an established Cape Town architect, was placed first, Gerard Moerdijk was the run-ner-up, and third were the Wits Univer-sity architects Cowin, Powers and Ellis.

John Perry was extremely good at win-ning competitions. He was the architect, through competition, for the first two residences at the University of the Witwa-tersrand and for the Johannesburg Magis-trates Court. Clive Chipkin considers him to have been conscious of the tempo of the time, one who understood the impor-tance of patronage.

His design was in tune with and re-sponsive to what a conservative City Council thought a dignified civic library ought to look like, an example of ‘pared down classicism’, effectively based on

American Renaissance architecture of the early 20th century.

THE PERRY DESIGNThe new library building needed to be in a spatial conversation with the Edward-ian era Johannesburg City Hall across the new Library Gardens. The design achieves a certain grandeur through the three triumphal arches with the trio of entrance doors, above the gentle rise of steps facing the gardens. The high arched windows throw light into the generously proportioned peristyle foyer, with its veined marble-clad columns, which gives access to the Reference, Children’s and Lending Libraries. The hidden treasure of the 1935 library, however, lies in the grandeur of the inner atrium, with its biscuit-coloured, light facebrick walling, allowing natural light into the interior li-

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brary rooms through clerestory windows. Perry, in the opinion of Clive Chipkin, paid more attention to appearance and the impact of his design than to the prac-ticalities such as an adequate lift, disabil-ity access or toilets. Attention went into detailing such as fine German silver door handles with the city’s coat of arms, wood work around doors and skylights, the wrought-iron banisters on the staircases, the delicacy of the lighting and of course the grand Corinthian columns with their key pattern design, in an art deco idiom, around the plaster acanthus leaves.

JOHANNESBURG/NEW YORK COMPARISONSPerry, it would appear, also drew inspira-tion from the JP Morgan Library in New York City, which housed the wealthy philanthropist’s personal collection, de-signed by the American firm McKim, Mead and White, leading exponents of the American Renaissance Style in the first decade of the 20th century. They borrowed and highlighted the orna-ment, design and proportions of Italian renaissance architecture in their work and the Morgan Library was regarded as McKim’s masterpiece.

Perry’s design gave the citizens of Jo-hannesburg a durable and classic build-ing with exterior walls of warm Free State sandstone. Included are eight large sculp-tured figures, by Moses Kottler, of emi-nent men in literature, philosophy and science, not dissimilar to the sculptured reliefs of the Morgan Library. The build-ing was however an anachronism in time. Johannesburg in the thrusting, growing years after 1933, was a dynamic, innova-tive, astounding Art Deco city with new internationalist buildings that looked to a different New York for inspiration – the Lewis and Marks building (1935-37), a near neighbour of the new Library, by Kallenbach, Kennedy and Furner, used the stepped architecture of skyscrapers, echoing New York’s Rockefeller Centre and RCA building (1932).

Between the classically styled Wits University Library (1935, Emley and Williamson in collaboration with Cowin and Power) and the Johannesburg Pub-lic Library, generations of Johannesburg citizens imbibed the view that classically inspired architecture and libraries were synonymous. Chipkin commented, ‘Per-ry’s modern classicism was regarded as particularly appropriate for civic archi-

tecture – weighty, clean-cut and beauti-fully detailed with a fresh, recent (if not modern) look.’

FROM CONSTRUCTION TO FINAL CIVIC TRIUMPHPerry was appointed the architect of the new Library in March 1931. He was Cape Town-based and never relocated, instead using Johannesburg architect, AJ Mar-shall, as the resident architect and Mer-ryfield, his assistant and later his partner, to attend local committee meetings.

There were countless problems dur-ing the construction phase. Then City Librarian, Samuel B Asher (librarian from 1911-1936) did not enjoy a harmonious relationship with Perry and associates. RF Kennedy, a later chief librarian, in his history of the Library, ‘The Heart of the City’, refers to the Architect [Perry] as ‘much maligned’ and the Librarian [Asher] as known for ‘his impossible in-sistences’. Kennedy refers to key prob-lems in design and planning. However, he commented with pride in the 1960s, that ‘The Library building on Market Square is still ... one of the finest build-ings in Johannesburg’.

The construction for the new building was undertaken by Berryman and Sons. ‘White only’ labour was used, a policy from the all-white government to address the high levels of white unemployment during the great depression. In 1933 a de-cision was taken to add an additional up-per storey to accommodate the Africana Museum. Air-conditioning was a novel and welcome feature for the stacks and the reference library, with dust managed through a then-sophisticated vacuum cleaning plant. A lift was not part of the original design and had to be squeezed in. The new building was finally occu-pied in January 1935.

1 Library across the Library Gardens2 Existing reading room3 Entrance foyer4 Detail of capital5 External sculpture

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PARKING GARAGES AND BURROWING DEEPER – THE 1970sIn the 1970s the construction of the vast parking garage under the Library Gardens opened up the opportunity to expand the stacks deeper underground. Two floors of underground parking were added with additional basement floors solving the problems of space for a few more decades. In the 1990s the Geology Museum and the Africana Museum made the move to Newtown and became the core of Museum Africa in the old Market buildings, allowing the library to occupy its entire building for the first time.

JOHANNESBURG WELCOMES THE CARNEGIE PARTNERSHIPThe first decade of the 21st century brought pressure to the library in the number of users and the growing hold-ings of books. The Carnegie Corporation of New York partnered with the Johan-nesburg Public Library in 2001, provid-ing grants for reading projects, extending library services to disadvantaged com-munities, computerising and digitising to improve information availability. The granting of $2 million for the specific Model City Library project boosted the total budget of R68 million, spread over three years, to redevelop the library. The

interest of the Carnegie Corporation was in the software capabilities of a new library, with the city finding the funds for the bricks and mortar renovations.

CELEBRATING THE PAST IN THE NEW DESIGNFrom a panel of approved professionals, the practice of Jonathan Stone (and his wife Jane) was selected for the project. His Johannesburg presence has made the relationship with and meeting of the requirements of the City, the Library and the Carnegie Corporation far hap-pier than the relationship that Perry and Asher enjoyed.

Stone considers the building a ‘tour de force in material and workmanship’ but notes that, over its 75-year life-span, certain elements needed repair. His approach has been to conserve, preserve and respect the heritage of the past, re-taining the 1935 library with its careful attention to the detail of the sculptured wood, marble and sense of civic pres-ence, while at the same time being bold. He comments, ‘The long-term life of the building should take precedence over the term of a single person.’

REPAIRS AND RESTORATIONThe early stage of the project was es-sentially the restoration of the building ‘from the top down’. Insensitive additions to the original skylights were removed with high performance glass installed to reduce heat loading on the inside of the building. The repair and restoration of the copper roof proved to be a challenge. On-site training, the teaching of old skills to new craftsmen and experimentation eventually led to the invisible roof being a ‘job well done’.

STRUCTURAL CHALLENGESThe existing building has a courtyard. The requirement for additional floor area and new services is accommodated here in a new structure. New floor slabs supported by four corner towers have been inserted. These structural towers (rather like table legs), allow the new addition to span the

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space between theatre and library. The essential new services are now housed here. The new structure is independent from the existing framework of the old building, a sensible decision from both a conservation and structural perspective.

The constrained space within the old building created great difficulty. Concep-tually the boldness of vision of Stone was to take the existing foyer and to ‘pull it up’ through the building, transforming it to do things that the foyer missed do-ing in the past. The space is opened up to the inner atrium, accessed by a strik-ing, dominant escalator, with part of the original multiple storey volume being retained. Its previously hidden, beautiful brickwork is now exposed. At the top floor of the extended foyer you are rewarded spatially with a large clear span space and clerestory windows let in natural light. When dealing with structural and design issues Stone seeks the most direct solu-tion. He also wants the new interventions to be different in structural, visual, mate-rial and conceptual ways to the existing building. Thus, for example, an open space frame construction has been used for the roof, contrasting sharply with the original classical design.

BUDGETS AND CONSERVATION WORK – ‘LESS IS MORE’Budget constraints created a particular challenge in designing the new structure. A large component of the budget had to be allocated to improving and restoring

the existing building, leaving quite lim-ited funds for the new work. Nonetheless, a certain forced economy is good when dealing with heritage buildings. ‘Less is definitely more. It is interesting that a modernist notion holds true when you deal with conservation,’ comments Stone.

THE DESIGN STRATEGYStone comments that often an architect’s mindset is about the ego-driven idea. A conservation approach requires a quiet voice and an appreciation that what you are conserving is far more important than a new intervention. Conservation reverses the usual hierarchy in design. It requires invisibility and a respect for the past.

The escalators make a strong statement, but in bringing the inner treasured atrium into the working space of the library, much has been added and an older design en-hanced. Stone has managed to repair and conserve an important building in the city of Johannesburg. He worked with the li-brarians to give a new understanding of the modern library as a media and resource centre with new spaces now allowing for so much more computer connectivity, media and physical accessibility.

The old library was a repository of books, treasures, newspapers. That function and feature still remains within the reference library and the stacks. But new purposes now consciously come to the fore in the new design. The approach has been to separate the old and new functions, keep-ing the book and storage space in the older

sections of the building and locating the computer and media spaces in the new. The design approach gets the user out of the storage space and creates an interac-tive interface between the two.

CONCLUSIONAs the City builds a new network of librar-ies and services, the library – the ‘Heart of the City’ – beats to invigorate, inspire and educate new generations. Books remain, as the frieze above the entrance states, ‘the treasure house of the mind’ (Libri Thesaurus Animi).

REFERENCESInterviews with Jonathan Stone and Clive Chipkin.R F Kennedy: The Heart of the City (Juta and Co. 1970).Allister Macmillan (Editor): The Golden City (1935).Clive M Chipkin: Johannesburg Style Architecture and Society, 1880s–1960s (David Philip , 1993).Clive M Chipkin: Johannesburg Transition (Ste Publishers, 2008).Booklet ‘The Johannesburg City Library 2012 – A commemorative publication on the occa-sion of the re-opening of the Johannesburg City Library’ (14th February, 2012).Artefacts website – information on John PerryJP Morgan Library Architectural History- http://www.themorgan.org/about/historyArchi-tecture.asp‘The New Public Library’ The South African Architectural Record, September 1935.Pamphlet, C Walker: ‘The William Cullen Library 1934-2009’ (exhibition Celebrating Darwin with Cullen, 22 November, 2009).

6 Juxtaposition of old and new7 New escalator into space-frame hall8 View of the interior of the new Michaelis Arts Library – view to the west. Originally the Geology Museum of the JPL

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THE DEVELOPMENT OF the school over the last 100 years has occurred in a piecemeal fashion, and this has created a rich mosaic of different building styles and histories. Importantly, during this period, the school resisted the tempta-tion to re-organise the spaces in a rational utilitarian modern manner. This has giv-en rise to a set of spaces similar to those found in a city where chance encounters can and do occur. The paths of pupils crisscross every day on their way to and from classrooms, making a non-hierarchic network of spaces and movement routes that allow the youngest and oldest girls’ paths to crisscross again and again.

A campaign to re-imagine the school was initiated in the early 2000s, and has culminated in the construction of a number of new buildings and spaces within the school grounds. Importantly, the school’s brief to the architects was that, while they respected and loved the older buildings, they did not want to create a pastiche imitation of the old buildings, but rather to establish a new language of buildings that would mark a break from the past while still respecting that past.

Three key ideas formed the basis of the design strategy, and these ideas affect ways of thinking about heritage, and

ways of using history as a source of ideas for making contemporary architecture.

1. PROGRESSIVE VERSUS PATHOLOGICAL CONSERVATIONIn his seminal book The Architecture of the City Aldo Rossi distinguishes be-tween two different attitudes towards historic buildings. The first response he terms Pathological Conservation – by this he means an approach that seeks to return the building to a state most closely approximating its original condition. This would include freezing the use of

ST CYPRIAN’S GIRLS’ SCHOOLBY JO NOERO

ARCHITECT NOERO WOLFF ARCHITECTS

St Cyprians is a well-established Anglican school in Cape Town. Both the setting of the school and the original buildings, which were designed by the office of Herbert Baker, Kendall and Morris, are very special.

1 View of proposed extensions and additions to St Cyprian’s Girls School

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the spaces and leaving them as originally intended. I consider this approach to be antagonistic towards the idea that archi-tecture is a part of a living tradition. The second approach is termed Progressive Conservation, which sees architecture as a dynamic process of tradition wherein buildings are given new life by continual-ly being re-adapted to suit new uses over time, in response to new requirements that society throws up. This means that the buildings’ fabric will be adjusted and contemporary uses and spaces inserted and/or added to existing fabric. This was the approach adopted at St Cyprian’s.

2. ARCHAIC SPACEFollowing on from research into the structure and nature of the traditional city, Rossi also proposed that the works of architecture possessing the greatest ca-pacity to adjust to new and different uses over time are those characterised by the greatest geometric precision. For exam-ple, the Colosseum in Rome has effort-lessly supported a wide range of uses over 2 000 years of existence, without having changed the basic order of structure and space of the building. I have termed the spaces made by these kinds of buildings Archaic Space. My interpretation of these

spaces is that they are marked by a strong sense of platonic geometry, which is giv-en special expression with regard to the plan form. Because the school required us to design, in some cases, sets of spaces whose future uses were indeterminate, I chose to make these kinds of spaces out of very precise geometries – Archaic Spaces. This is best illustrated by the Life Cen-tre, which is intended for a number of different uses, many of which have yet to be determined; in a sense we were asked to design a space for which no one single specific purpose had yet been assigned or would ever be assigned.

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use of platonic geometry and comprises a circle within which is placed a square and then a hexagon. At the centre the space is resolved once more with a square and a circle. In section the building is proportioned as a square with regard to height and width. This strategy has produced a space of strong spatial and geometric order, which has already proved its versatility, its uses including indoor hockey practice, a student debating competition and an examination centre.

3. THIRD SPACEIn many schools, spaces are designed with only utilitarian functions in mind, which tends to have two consequences. Firstly, the spaces shut out the creative engagement of children in the use of the spaces because of their singularity of use. Secondly, it follows that the spaces don’t allow for multiple or other uses. To deal with this issue we created a set of spaces, which we called Third Space. In a way Archaic Space and Third Space are simi-lar, in that they both seek to give space over to multiple uses. The difference is that Third Space is marked by being part of a larger spatial network, wherein

the new space sits adjacent to or within a larger space, while Archaic Space holds itself within its own set of spaces.

The idea of Third Space is best illustrated by the circular hub spaces of the new Knowledge Centre in the old gymnasium. These large-scaled timber constructions, which sit alongside an internal street running adjacent to the

2 Overall plan3, 4 Site plans5, 6, 7, 8, 9 New Knowledge Centre

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new library, were made with no specific purpose in mind, but were offered up to the students to use as they wished. As a consequence many different uses have emerged, including impromptu theatre, large and small meetings, quiet reading, teaching and homework, among others. What is clear is that the uses to which the students have put the spaces have been imagined or chosen by them, and are beyond anything that the architects could have imagined. This open-endedness is key to the concept of Third Space.

The following buildings have been built or added to existing heritage buildings at the school. These

interventions are part of a larger planning study conducted by the architects at the beginning of this process. The planning process set out guidelines for the future development of the school. These guidelines were defined as a set of performance criteria rather than cast as a so-called master plan. In this way a great deal of flexibility was created, which nonetheless offered up a clear future vision of the school in spatial terms.

NEW KNOWLEDGE CENTREThis is located in the historic gym. The existing structure remains untouched. The new additions comprise prefabri-cated timber construction, which can

be dismantled in the future to return the gym to its original use. An existing open-air courtyard adjacent to the gym has been enclosed with a translucent roof and three large wooden hubs have been placed within this space.

NEW IT HUBThis was built in the Tortoise Courtyard. It is a two-storey circular building, faced with glass mosaics that reflect the sky and surrounding buildings, making the new building almost disappear. The cir-cular form was chosen to minimise the impact of the new building in the court-yard, and to enable the teacher to view all computer monitors from her desk. The

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interior is designed like a space capsule – the space is small and the equipment has been carefully designed to fit.

The intention was to provide the pu-pils with a spatial experience different to the ones they were used to in other teaching spaces.

MOLTENO HOUSEExtensions were conceived as a set of new specialist spaces added to an existing rectangular teaching block. The exten-sions weave between existing trees. In so doing the value of the natural landscape is given precedence over architecture – this lesson is an important one, which the school wanted its pupils to learn.

LIFE CENTRELife orientation has developed as a re-quirement of the national curriculum. The subject encompasses a wide range of skills including physical education and development. While the subject matter is expected to evolve, the school needed a flexible space that could be used for exercises during teaching periods, and could double up as a sports pavilion and rehearsal space after hours.

The new life centre is placed between existing buildings and is circular in plan. The facade consists of an inner layer of sliding glass screens and an outer layer of specially made breezeblocks. Thus, a thermally efficient set of conditions is

achieved. The Life Centre consists of two levels, which can be used together or separately. Blinds ensure that it can be used for drama and cinema as well as hired out as conference space, among many other potential uses. The circular form negotiates between the awkward geometries of the existing buildings and the new building. The space inside the building develops the idea of Archaic Space, which has been generated by a precise geometry in plan and section.

10, 11, 12 New IT Centre13, 14, 15, 16 Molteno House

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CREATIVE AND SCIENCE CENTRESThese two classroom blocks have been remade by retaining the outer shell of the buildings and reworking the interior spaces. I would consider this to be a good example of Progressive Conservation.

OTHER WORKSIn addition to the above projects, the ar-chitects have been involved in remaking the interiors of the existing classrooms and other minor works at the school.

FUTURE PROJECTSThe last remaining major work to be com-pleted is the new Activity Centre, which is placed at the top of the site overlooking the hockey field and is framed by Table

Architects: Noero Wolff ArchitectsCivil and Structural Engineers: De Villiers and HulmeQuantity Surveyors: Riverside ConsultingMechanical and Electrical Engineers: Clinkscales Maughn-BrownLandscape: Byron Douglas StudioContractor: GVK-Siya Zama

Mountain behind. Borrowing from Archi-tect Solomon’s original un-built domed roof design for UCT’s Jamieson Hall, the roof of the new hall is vaulted and the soffit is lined with red clay bricks. The soft, lazy curve of the vault is a perfect foil to the craggy texture of the mountain behind. A freestanding timber pergola both adjusts the geometry of the hall to the hockey field and acts as a scaling de-vice at the front terrace. A set of ramps and staircases create interlinked plat-forms that connect the hall and its spaces to the lower campus.

PROJECT TEAMJo Noero, Evandro Schwalbach, Korine Stegmann, Mias De Vries, Kylie Richards

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WERDMULLER CENTRE: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FAILUREIn 1969 Roelof Uytenbogaardt was asked to design a shopping complex for the South African Life Assurance Society (now Old Mutual) next to Main Road in Claremont, Cape Town. This building, completed in 1974, would become the most contentious building of his career and one of the most controversial buildings of the 20th century in South Africa. BY ILZE AND HEINRICH WOLFF

AT THE TIME, Old Mutual boldly decided to associate itself with the building by naming it after its chairman, Brigadier Werdmuller. Now, after nearly 40 years, Old Mutual is applying for a permit to demolish the Werd- muller Centre.

Many sharply conflicting opinions surrounded the project from the start; many architects praised the architecture, some criticised its excesses and, as time passed, it became clear that the centre was not a commercial success. Conflicting views continued over the years, even intensified, but today a new generation of admirers and asset managers is contesting the Werdmuller’s future.

What went wrong? Was the design flawed or did its owners fail to manage it appropriately? In considering the problems facing the Werdmuller, we have to establish whether the building has failed its intended purpose or whether the city and society failed the Werdmuller.

We would like to present an argument that an understanding of what the Werdmuller signifies to the contemporary generation could show a way forward for this building.

A FAILED IDEOLOGYIn the 1969 proposal, Uytenbogaardt claims that the building would serve ‘a hinterland of a well-mixed community ranging from high income through to middle and low.’1 He was not only referring to customers arriving via the train or Main Road, but also to the diverse community of the Claremont area at the time. The proposal was submitted and possibly accepted by February 1969, but by November 1969 Claremont was declared a ‘whites only’ area under the Group Areas Act. Evictions and removals started early in 1970, mostly from an area previously known as lower Claremont and today called Harfield Village.

It was a popular area in which to reside because it provided the mostly working-

class inhabitants easy access to the cheap network of public transport and therefore access to work and economic opportuni-ties. In addition the lower Claremont area had also developed into a self-sufficient area with many people running shops and family businesses with some family businesses dating back to the turn of the 20th century.2

Claremont as a whole was always seen as a major shopping district and as Joyce Murray describes in 1958 in her book ‘Claremont Album’ (1958:63):

‘Claremont preens itself when outsiders praise its wonderful shopping Centre. But the people who live in Claremont have their own special shops, often not the big showy stores with huge shop-windows but little places tucked away down a side street, recommended perhaps by a neighbour who has dealt there for years.’

She goes on to describe how (1958:64):‘outsiders complain that the population of Claremont is “so mixed”, not stopping

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appearance in South Africa in the previous two decades. By the mid-sixties, the first shopping malls were being developed on the periphery of the major cities with urban shopping centres following in the seventies.

Since the clarity with which the mall typology is understood today did not exist in the late sixties, developers entered into typological experimentation. For instance, Old Mutual developed the Werdmuller and Cavendish Centre at the same time – two completely different shopping typologies built within 100m of each other. The typology of Cavendish proved to be the more successful one. It should also be noted that none of the early shopping malls exist in their original condition; not only did they have cosmetic facelifts, but all of these early buildings had adjustments made to their circulation. These adjustments optimise the commercial efficiency of the architecture, eradicate problems of the original design, and respond to urban change. This is of great significance to the Werdmuller debate, since no 1970s mall would respond satisfactorily to contemporary commercial and urban demands without significant adaptation.

The typology of the Werdmuller grafted itself on that of a souk – small shops with narrow shop-fronts facing onto a common passage. Unfortunately, significant departures were made from this typology; the concentration of shops

to think how much the character of the Village owes to this variety. The different races have learnt to live together here in a civilized fashion: there is room for all in this Market Place.’

But what impact did the forced removals of an estimated 19 000 people have on the Werdmuller Centre? For one it reduced the amount of foot traffic to the centre because not only was there a decrease in the Claremont population but also a decrease in visitors to Claremont. Secondly, the Werdmuller Centre’s idea of catering for a micro-economy and small-scale traders – the souk idea – could not happen because that part of the population was not there anymore. Conversely, a more upmarket shopping centre like Cavendish Square thrived partly due to the influx of the more affluent whites moving into Claremont.

INCOHERENT PLANNINGTwo planning aspects have had a direct effect on the commercial marketability of the Werdmuller Centre. The one is the Claremont bypass, which was at the time that the Werdmuller Centre was designed, a plan by the City to relieve some of the traffic congestion in Main Road. The elevated bypass, which fronts the station side of the building, was considered as a design informant by Uytenbogaardt as he included it in his 1969 proposal, and in some of his conceptual sketches. The question mark hovering above the highway is testament to the uncertainty of the proposed highway, but Uytenbogaardt

proceeded to design Werdmuller in part as a response to the idea, perhaps captivated by the heightened urban quality that the duality could evoke.

The bypass, now called Claremont Boulevard3 was opened in 2009, at grade and not elevated. The City’s decades-long inertia in defining that space caused the building to be situated within – for most of its life – an eerie urban wasteland.

In the proposal of 1969, Uytenbogaardt cites that the design for the Werdmuller Centre would take advantage of the fact that the site is located at the fulcrum of a wide range of transportation opportunities, including depending on a ‘generous public parking area to the north’4. It is for this reason that the approved design allowed for only 23 parking bays. However, two years after the completion of the building the City of Cape Town released a plan – the Claremont Report of 1976 – that would have a severe effect on the Werdmuller Centre’s viability. The report indicated a building on the land previously dedicated to public parking. Today, although a bus terminus occupies the site, a large-scale parking area that is required to meet conventional shopping mall standards is not accommodated for.

THE LEGACY OF INNOVATIONAt the time when the Werdmuller was designed, indoor shopping centres were a rarity in South Africa. Main road department stores were more common, surrounded by smaller scale shops connected via the street. Shopping complexes with outdoor, off-street circulation have only made their

1 Advertisement2, 3 Uytenbougaardt concept sketches of

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is not high enough, the shop-fronts are too wide and the circulation goes up a ramp (without assistance, people flow like water in commercial buildings – always down, never up). The multiple internal circulation routes are also in conflict with street-based circulation around the Centre’s periphery. For all its shortcomings, the Werdmuller has a rare typology – so rare that Wessel de Jonge (world-renowned expert on the Modern Movement and co-founder of Docomomo International) said that he believed its typology was unique in Modern architecture and valuable for its multicultural reference. For many of the Werdmuller’s supporters, the free-flowing, intertwined spaces of the building signify a resistance to racial stereotyping of apartheid and the income and class categorisation of commerce that is the contemporary norm.

Today, the Werdmuller is still appreciated for its spatial innovation, without this extraordinary quality being put to any meaningful use.

THE FAILURE OF PROFITOne must appreciate that Old Mutual exists to grow investments, but the optimisation of profit has caused substantial problems for the Werdmuller. The trouble started before the building was even built. After Uytenbogaardt completed the design for the centre, Old Mutual acquired the other half of the same city block and asked the architect to develop this portion as well. Uytenbogaardt insisted that everything should be redesigned, but Old Mutual would have none of it. This presented a substantial challenge to the design since the first portion was designed around a central spiralling ramp with shops on the periphery, which produced blank edges to the newly acquired portion of the site. The final design dealt with the joint between the first and second phases with great formal skill, but the circulation of the block was badly fragmented.

Old Mutual’s insistence that their investments in buildings are primarily

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financial assets is the origin of substantial conflict in the urban environment. For most of us, these ‘assets’ are not assets at all; they are buildings in our shared urban environment.

The conflict, between financial interest for some and urban consequence for all, is what is at stake here. The blank street facades of internalised commerce are a shocking legacy of urban malls and the urban and economic consequences of suburban malls are even more devastating. Old Mutual has also been reluctant to recognise that their assets may be the heritage of others; Mutual Square in Rosebank, Johannesburg would be a prime example. This fine building was demolished in spite of substantial appeals to Old Mutual to respect its heritage value. If an owner finds it difficult to use a building for its own purposes, demolition is certainly not the only option; the building could be adapted or sold in acknowledgement of its heritage value.

In the case of the Werdmuller, it is quite possible that the request for a demolition permit has very little to do with the building itself but rather the seven floors of unrealised bulk that sit above it. The profits that can be realised from the Werdmuller’s destruction must weigh heavily on the minds of the asset managers who are considering the ‘value’ of the building. Old Mutual’s insistence on profiting from the Werdmuller, regardless of the consequence, is in direct conflict with the repeated appeals that the structure can be rehabilitated (for whatever use and by whoever) to become a rare and exceptional part of our city.

SIGNIFICANCE OF FAILUREBy all accounts, neither the shopping component nor the offices of the Werdmuller worked well. The undulating circulation routes of the building, which are so celebrated, are simultaneously part of the problem; the spatial order is not legible and with the rise in urban crime, its open, ‘democratic’ spaces have become hard to defend.

Today, the Werdmuller is a sorry sight. It is also in a state of purposeful neglect. Old Mutual is turning away prospective tenants and the building has received no maintenance for quite some time. It is hard to believe that any kind of space, with a main road, a train station, a bus station and a taxi rank on each of its four sides respectively, cannot be made to work. Or maybe this transportation hub is used by a clientele base perceived to be incompatible with the ‘vision’ of an upmarket Claremont.

Do the shortcomings of this design outweigh all other considerations of value to the point where demolition becomes the only option? Certainly not. The Castle of Good Hope is useless as a defence structure and yet our society pays large amounts of money to maintain it. The South African Breweries claim that Gawie Fagan’s award-winning conversion of the Ohlsons’ Brewery, a kilometre up the road from Werdmuller, is not serving its purpose. Does this fact constitute sufficient grounds to demolish this important work? Again, no. Problems of usefulness are not sufficient grounds for demolishing important works of architecture.

A clear understanding of the failures of the Werdmuller is central to its future – so too should we understand its achievements. Systematic research should be done to articulate these issues. The Barbican Centre in London suffered many problems similar to those of the Werdmuller, just at a much larger scale. It was repeatedly voted the ugliest building in London. Research was conducted to establish the problems, physical adjustments were made and today The Barbican is an important cultural centre in Europe.

THE FAILURE OF IMAGINATIONMore than anything, the proposed demolition of the Werdmuller signifies a failure of imagination. The idea that architects are not capable of inventing a new life for this building is insulting. One would have to find the right architect and ask the right questions.

The current owner appears to be part of

the problem. If they cannot use or adapt the building to serve their purposes, they should accept that someone else could. Pass it on to someone who wants it. To destroy something valuable, merely because one cannot imagine how to use it, is unacceptable.

The V&A Waterfront has shown leadership in this regard. The massive grain elevator in the Clocktower Precinct lost its usefulness long ago and presents major physical and structural challenges to adaptation. Many have tried their hand at a solution over the years, but recently the celebrated British architect Thomas Heatherwick was approached to break the impasse, and apparently is doing it well.

The Werdmuller has a generosity towards the city and wonderfully intertwining spaces, which are extremely rare. Only a lack of imagination could lead anyone to conclude that a blank site would be a richer starting point than the building as it stands today.

REFERENCESField Sean (ed) 2001 Lost Communities, living memories – Remembering forced removals in Cape Town, David Phillip Publishers.

Murray, J, 1958, Claremont Album, A.A. Balkema.

Wolff, I, 2009, Werdmuller: artefact of an ephemeral context, South African Journal of Art History Volume 24, 75-86.

END NOTES1 Quote taken from an undated feasibility study named L.H.C 2, compiled by the office of Roelof Uytenbogaardt, accessed from UCT Manuscripts and Archives, Roelof Uytenbogaardt Papers, BC 1264, H- Projects.

2 A full description and oral history of lower Claremont as it was before the forced removals is found in Sean Field (ed) 2001, Lost Communities, living memories – Remembering forced removals in Cape Town, David Phillip Publishers.

3 The Claremont Boulevard is a R22-million project entirely paid for by the Claremont Central Improvement District Company, a private initiative that arose from the Claremont Business Forum in the early 1990s.

4 See note 1.

4 Colonnade5 Intertwined spaces6 Spatial innovation not put to

meaningful use

VOORTREKKER MONUMENT AT WINBURGTHRESHOLD FOR A NEW GENERATION OF COMMEMORATIVE ARCHITECTURE

BY ALBRECHT HEROLD

CONTEXT FOR MONUMENTS TO THE VOORTREKKERSIn 1931 the Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Organisationsi es-tablished the Sentrale Volksmonumentekomitee (SVK), a com-mittee delegated the responsibility of all markers of Afrikaner history (Ferreira, 1975:4–5). The most important of these was the realisation of a national Voortrekker monument to coincide with the centenary of the Great Trek, the migration of thou-sands of descendants of Dutch settlers (Afrikaners) during the decade following 1835, dissatisfied with the policies of the Brit-ish. Determined to search for freedom and independence in the interior of the country, a number of parties under various leaders set out northwards from the Eastern Cape in ox wagons.

A sub-committee with architect Gerard Moerdijk (1890–1958) as advisor inspected all sites with a claim to trekker com-memorationii. All except four were discarded because of their inaccessibility (Ferreira, 1975:26). In the final round the choice for the national Voortrekker monument fell between Pretoria and Winburg which, with 14 votes to 12 respectively, the former narrowly won, and the government confirmed as the most ap-propriate location (Ferreira, 1975:46).

The Pretoria design resulted from a public invitation for pro-posals from which the SVK chose the submission of a laager, which Moerdijk was then briefed to combine with his own, a building whose concept owes much to the Völkerschlachtsdenk-mal at Leipzig, Germany, 1896–1913. The foundation stone was unveiled on 16 December 1938, the termination of the re-en-acted Great Trek (Eeufees) from Cape Town, a date coincident

Abstract — The Voortrekker Monument at Winburg in the central Free State resulted from an open architectural competition held in 1964. To the surprise of many, it was won by an English-speaking architect from Durban, Hans Hallen, who participated because he believed the jurors were able to judge a modernist design. With his abstract entry of three-dimensional sophistication he set the threshold for a new generation in commemorative architecture in South Africa.

This article aims to contextualise the nascency of the monument and to explore the generative ideas of the design incorporated in the conditions of the brief including the role of the women in the trek. Finally its status as a precedent and condition today is discussed.

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1 Cut-away section of the national Voortrekker monument, Pretoria, by Gerhard Moerdijk, 1938–49. Note the statue of mother and child on the axis of arrival and the oculus in the dome with the ray of sunlight falling on the sarcophagus in the basement. (Heymans, R. The Voortrekker Monument, Pretoria. VM Board of Control, 1986, p7)

2 Monument at Blood River in the form of a kakebeenwa, the wagon the trekkers set out in, literally a jawbone wagon, because of the crescent-tilted shape to its side elevation, which resembled the jawbone of an animal, by sculptor Coert Steynberg, 1947 (Afrikanerbakens, 2006: 119. Photographer: Hendrik Oosthuysen)

3 The routes of all seven Voortrekker leaders [Aldbridge, B (1973) Die Geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika in Beeld. Cape Town: Struik, p105].

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with the centenary of the Battle of Blood River, a turning point in trekker conquest that was observed for most of the 20th cen-tury as the Day of the Vow, a public holiday. Eleven years later the 40m cubic shrine was finally inaugurated when at noon on the same date in 1949 the sun shone through the oculus in the vaulted roof of the great hall and a ray of light illuminated the inscription, Ons vir jou, Suid-Afrika, carved upon the sarcopha-gus in the basement, symbolising the Voortrekker heroes (Pic-ton-Seymour, 1989:162).

While the Pretoria monument was under construction the SVK in 1947 oversaw the realisation of another at Blood River by sculptor Coert Steynberg in the form of a granite kakebeenwa, the wagon the trekkers set out in, literally a jawbone wagon, because of the crescent-tilted shape to its side elevation that resembled the jawbone of an animaliii.

Winburg was the realisation of the promise of a minor (kleiner) Voortrekker monument (Ferreira, 1989:117), the focus of this article, upon the completion of which the SVK disbanded in November 1968 (Ferreira, 1975:265).

However, by the time Winburg got its turn, the impetus of national and cultural identity engendered among Afrikaners in the decade following Eeufees saw the white South African elec-torate vote into power the National Party (NP), which stood for Afrikaner domination and racial segregation – apartheid. Con-sequently, the 1950s were spent promoting the appointment of Afrikaners into the armed and civil services and putting into place the infrastructure for discriminatory legislation while crushing resistance, e.g. the Sharpeville shootings. With the NP government progressively firmly entrenched in power, it ig-nored the strong condemnation of the international community and in 1961 broke free from the British Commonwealth to be-come an independent republic (Watson, 2007). This transforma-tion ushered in a period of newfound Afrikaner consciousness, and it is within this context that the monument at Winburg and its design must be understood.

CONTEXT FOR THE WINBURG MONUMENTFollowing an approach by the SVK the Provincial Adminis-tration of the (Orange) Free State accepted responsibility for the realisation of the monument and established a dedicated committee, the Vrystaat Voortrekker Monument Kommittee (VVMK) under the chairmanship of the Administrator and pro-vincial leader of the NP, the honourable JWSL (Sand) du Ples-sisiv (Ferreira, 1975:241–2). The VVMK meeting held in Bloem-fontein in September 1963 set the ground rules, namely that the monument would be non-utilitarian, should express the striving for freedom and be located in the Winburg area (FSPA, VVMK Minutes of 20 September 1963). Winburg was the first town to be established in the Free State in 1835 and served as its capi-tal. It also commemorates the Voortrekkers who in 1837 camped there in the largest gathering of the Great Trek, constitutionally and ecclesiastically united (Ferreira, 1975:244), before dispers-ing in various parties. Piet Retief led a party across the Draken-sberg eastward into (KwaZulu-) Natal, to which destination the parties of Gert Maritz and Piet Uys Retief later followed, while those of Hendrik Potgieter trekked northwards and Louis Tri-chardt northeastward.

However, what sealed the choice of site on the farm Riet-fontein, 2.5km south of Winburg, east of the national road (N1) then in its planning stages, was the survival of a cottage, inter-esting for historical and architectural reasons. MT Steyn, the last President of the Orange Free State Republic, revered for the ‘courage and inspiration he radiated after the Anglo-Boer SA War’, was born in the cottage on the farm of his uncle in 1857 (SESA), a stone building replete with brakdak and peach-pip floors, which had been declared a National Monument, and was now reconstructed and accessible to the public. It was due to this heritage structure that the 85ha site was donated to the Province by the Winburg municipalityv, which itself undertook that its black township would ‘under no circumstances’ expand in the direction of the monument (Ferreira, 1975:245).

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CHOICE OF DESIGN BY COMPETITIONWhile some explanations were needed, the VVMK decided upon the procurement of designs solely from architects and in an open competition (FSPA, Minutes of 21 April 1964), that is to say, one in which all members could participate as it had the approval of the Institute of South African Architects (ISAA). As is known, a competition is a good means to gather designs from which to make a choice, but everything stands and falls with the jury. Consequently, the choice of the design is, in effect, already made when the jury is selected (De Haan & Haagsma, 1988:13).

Advice on juror composition was sought from the Provincial Architect who, in turn, approached the Orange Free State Pro-vincial Institute of Architects (OFSPIA), which nominated Dr Barrie Biermann (1924–1991), lecturer in Architecture at the University of Natal in Durban since August 1952, and inaugural head of the Department of Architecture at the University of the Orange Free State (UOFS), Professor George Quine-Lay (FSPA, VVMK Minutes of 3 June 1964), who on declining was substi-tuted by architect Leon Roodt (1924–1995), then practising in Welkom. Biermann was the first Afrikaner architectural scholar and Roodt the incumbent OFSPIA President, 1964–6, and suc-ceeded Quine Lay at UOFS in 1970. The Commission for the Preservation of National and Historical Monuments, Relics and Antiques nominated Prof JJ Oberholster, historian, academic at UOFS, and Free State Commission member. After inspecting the site, and confirming its appropriateness, the three-man jury attended the VVMK meeting at which the committee resolved to place its full confidence in the jury for the preparation of the conditions for the competition, on its adjudication of entries and selection of the winning design, points insisted upon by Roodt (FSPA, VVMK Minutes of 23.6.1964, Point 4.6).

An invitation to compete was advertised in the journal of the ISAA (SAAR, September 1964:27). Every entrant was issued with a synopsis of the trek in the Free State and a brief. The role of the women in the trek was to be acknowledged, the pos-sibility of symbolically representing the five parties by streams of water explored, and explanatory notes were to accompany all submissions (Ferreira, 1975:247).

COMPETITION OUTCOMEThe competition closed in Bloemfontein on 4 December 1964, by which time it had attracted 36 entries, the majority by Afri-kaans architects based in the Transvaal, more precisely in the re-gion today known as Gauteng (FSPA). Surprisingly, none of the returned Kahn graduates had entered, neither Uytenbogaardtvi, Meyer, Theronvii, Gallagher nor Schlapobersky and, regrettably, it is not possible to compare the design of the winning entry within the context of the full complement as on adjudication, all ‘models and drawings’ were returned to their authors (FSPA: Letter Secretary VVMK to B Clark-Brown, 12 February 1965).

Nevertheless, according to the jury report (SAAR, August 1965:29-30) the biggest challenge was the search for an appro-priate representation of symbolism as the designs varied from ‘sophisticated delicate structures to almost ru bonkig-dierlike (crude bony-animalistic) proposals’, with much in between. The report also mentions that few entries had used the topog-raphy of the site to inform their designs; most had reshaped it. The jury looked for a strong visual appearance and evocative character, richness in structural form and imagery, designs which would distil the essential in the monumental, incorporated water without being reliant upon it, and concluded that the successful entries were designed in the spirit of the time and rebuked, per-haps in reference to the Pretoria monument, that any re-creation of a monument of the past would be anachronistic and lack the vitality of the original. These are the ideals of modernism, which saw the first prize being awarded to Hallen & Dibbviii, a practice based in Durban.

WINNING ARCHITECT AND CONCEPT Hans Heyerdahl Hallen was born in Durban in 1930 to Nor-wegian parents. As his artistic talents came to the fore, his high school art teacher advised on Architecture as a career, where-upon Hallen enrolled at the University of Natal in the inaugural cohort, 1949-53. The Department was headed by Professor Paul Connell, who in 1952 attracted two UCT PhD graduates to the staff – Ron Lewcock and Barrie Biermann (who later served on the Winburg competition jury). This complement laid the foun-dations for Hallen’s ascendancy as an architect.

Hallen’s design was informed by the landscape setting. He lo-cated the monument on the knoll on the 4525m contour, which would allow it to be the natural focus of the site while allowing for good visibility from the N1 in the position then proposed. Visitors would enter from the west and park in a lot at the foot of the monument before ascending the knoll by way of a meander-ing pathway, on the outside of a water chain.

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The monument was conceived as a sculpture to be experi-enced in the round. Its generative idea was the laager, a circu-lar defensive encampment of wagons arranged by trekkers as a shelter while invading and conquering the land. As there were five main trekker parties, Hallen literally ‘circled five wagons’. However, these were not drawn as rectangles as their plan-form would dictate, but as crescents reaching outward, a form that had its origins in the tilted side elevations of the kakebeenwa, and these were tightly assembled around a central space symbolic of a laager. As if to make patent its defensive role, Hallen cut a slit in the centre of each crescent, to resemble a loophole. These crescents were then projected vertically as shafts before being sliced at a steep vertical angle, the heights be-ing governed by the largest tall objects in the Free State land- scape, grain silos (email, 7 February 2012).

The five shafts to the cluster, of differing radii and heights, were bonded by a low roof designed to harvest rainwater and thus conceived as a cistern from which five spouts cantilever between the shafts to decant into large, oval, brick-lined bowls surrounding the group at the foot of each intercolumniation. These bowls were reticulated to drain to the largest and cascade along the water chain before being re-circulated by a pump em-bedded in the southern slope of the knoll, with additional water supplied from the abutting Rietfontein dam. Like its Pretoria counterpart, the roof was distinguished by a central oculus, but in addition to throwing daylight on a bronze tableau to be in-serted on the floor, it was here also to appreciate views up into the heights of the shafts and the heavens above.

SYMBOLISM OF THE WINNING DESIGN While not a condition of entry, Hallen submitted his notes of explanation in Afrikaansix. These stated that the symbolism was ‘complex’ and cannot be described exactly (kan nie noukeurig om-skryf word nie) but resulted essentially from the following: the shafts were symbolic of the five main treks, each of which was identified at the base by the surname of a leader; the cluster was symbolic of the orderly community united in faith, which like the spouts would water the land spiritually; the striving of the trekkers was expressed in the cusped terminations to the shafts while the roofed, protective space (beskutte ruimte) at the heart of the composition changed the scale from the massive to the intimate to speak of the role of the women in the trek (SAAR, August 1965:30).

THE WOMEN IN THE TREKBesides the symbolism of the protected space, Hallen’s entry proposed the inclusion of a figurative statue of a woman em-bracing a child, visible on both plan and section. In the laager, the whole family was drawn into military defence and attack, accustomed to facing danger and privation. Loading the rifles was complicated, so the trekkers used more than one gun,

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4 Voortrekker Monument, Winburg. Site plan of winning entry by Hallen & Dibb, 1964 (BBAL).

5 Top: SW-NE Section showing from left: water chain at foot of the largest bowl; spout discharging from the roof with oculus over the bronze tableau on floor and the cut back at right with vertical baffles to angle daylight to fall directly on the statue below. Bottom: Hallen’s plan of crescents defining a laager surrounded by bowls into which the spouts of the roof would discharge. Note the water chain aside the access path at bottom of image (BBAL; Composite image by author).

6 View up through the oculus into the shafts and the heavens above (Afrikanerbakens, 2006: 119. Photographer: Hendrik Oosthuysen).

which the women would load while their menfolk fired at advancing warriors.

To give cognisance to the indispen-sable back-up of the women, the statue was to be formally positioned and illumi-nated in the following way. The plans of the crescent-shaped shafts are arranged externally tangential to an egg-shaped interior, the symbolic laager, and the axis is aligned roughly south-north, the direction the trek took through the Free State. The southern intercolumniation of the shafts is widest and serves as the ac-cess from the path up from the parking lot. Because the northern crescent-shaft at the head of the egg-shape is not radi-ally concurrent with the others, the axis of entry terminates not on its slit but on a solid side, ideal as a backdrop for a figu-rative statue, and reminiscent in its axial placing of the Pretoria counterpart. To emphasise this focus, the corresponding section shows that the roof was here cut short to allow for direct overhead day-lighting angled by louvers.

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT Having been instructed to prepare docu-mentation for construction, Hallen re-quested the appointment of structural engineers Michal S Zakrzewski and Partners of Durban, whose magnum opus was the Ocean Terminal, built 1958–62. This motivation relied not only on the ease for professional collaboration, but on the experience the practice had gained in building reinforced concrete maize grain silos in the eastern Free State, for which younger Polish émigré, Miloslav (Milek) Masojada, had been resident en-gineer, and who was duly assigned to the Winburg project. However, due to the (towering, 24m+) heights and the cres-cent forms of the shafts, specialist input on wind pressure was sought from Colin Fleming, then lecturer in Civil Engineer-ing at the University of Natal who sub-jected a model to testing in a wind tunnel (email, 26 January 2012).

In the process, it was realised that the shafts would have to be substantially ‘beefed up’ and that the stubs of the

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crescents could not taper. To allow for eccentric thickening, the outside diam-eter of the shaft had to become semi-circular and the inside elliptical. Hallen thus redesigned the stubs as rebates, and recessed a half-round channel set on the diagonal in the inside corner, much like a flute between fillets in classical architecture, and chamfered all corners to allow for the removal of the shutter-ing without damaging the cast concrete forms. Similarly, the detailing of the slits in the centres of the crescents had to be reconsidered from a simple cut on plan to the shape of a double funnel with neck in the depth of the wall, much like the loopholes of ‘Rice-Type’ blockhouses, but asymmetricalx.

In the preparation for construction, the plan had to be distilled from artistic to geometric principles. The irregular pentagonal star-shape of the roof was laid out from a point centred on the position of the oculus and the coincident plaque beneath. Three semi-circles were set radially concurrent with this geometry, the smallest (Uys) facing northwest and the two facing east (Potgieter) and west (Trichardt) respectively, which are

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the largest and of equal size, while the north-eastern (Maritz) and southern (Retief) semi-circles were set out from a point on the axis of the eastern semi-circle, some 1 250mm from the centre of construction where the two rays meet at an obtuse angle of 165ºxi.

This shift in points of geometric ignition resulted in the wid-est opening on the south under the most pronounced spout, which became the main access from the car park, and provided the solid backdrop for the proposed statue on the inside of the northern half-round, because the slit was not aligned with the geometry of the pentagonal star. While the roof is scribed to fit between the cluster of half-round shafts and supported on a set of brackets off each with shims like bridge construction, it is notched from the northern shaft to define an aperture for day-light to fall on the statue.

The shafts were designed for construction in 2 400mm lifts with the aesthetic advantage of having the construction joints scale the cluster. The slits in the centres of the semi-circular shafts were accommodated in full-height recesses with the voids taking up the central portion of each lift, but for that coincident with the roof, which remained solid, and the ground floor where voids begin from dado level upward. The termination of each shaft was chamfered at a vertical angle of 30º, unusually from the curved inside of the semi-circles up to the stubs, with the exposed surface sliced radially horizontal.

CONSTRUCTIONHallen enquired about the best silo-building contractors from Masojada. After inspecting the joinery shop in which the tim-ber shuttering would be manufactured, he was satisfied that Welkom Construction (Pty) Ltd could carry out the project to the standard required. Sole proprietor was the late Hans Weiss who had trained as a joiner in Germany before immigrating to South Africa in the aftermath of WWII (email, 28 March 2012).

On the advice of the VVMK the tender by Welkom Construc-tion of R40 465.25 was awarded by the Provincial Director of Works. With that, construction could commence under Hallen’s supervision on 20 September 1967, almost three years after the competition submission date.

Two months later, on the Day of the Vow 1967, CR Swart, in-augural and incumbent State President of South Africa, who co-incidentally was born and schooled at Winburg and served as its MP, 1941–59, (SESA) unveiled the perimeter ring to the bronze plaque, some 1 200mm in outer diameter. When the inaugu-ration took place a year later, on 10 October 1968, the central bronze disc was inserted in the perimeter ring by his successor State President JJ Fouche, former Administrator of the Orange Free State (SESA).

The total development cost approximately R75 000, which had been collected by public subscription on a Rand-for-Rand basis (Ferreira, 1975:257). Interestingly, the engineer’s fees of R4 833.26 exceeded those of the architect at R4 164.82 (Fer-

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7 Details from left: vertical recess with slit, recessed surname of a trekker party-leader and the rebated stub to the shaft with half-round channel as a modern flute.

8 Tracing of plan showing shafts and pentagonal star-shaped roof by Hallen. Note the layout with the radii of three half-round shafts concurrent with the oculus and plaque on the floor, the northern and southern shafts radiating from a point eastward, the wider aperture on the south beneath the most pronounced gargoyle, and the distance in spacing between the outline of the roof and the northern half-round shaft (BBAL).

9 Detail of the space which the statue of the Voortrekker woman and child would have occupied against the solid wall space left of the slit and symmetrical beneath the brackets. The roof otherwise scribed to the shafts is here cut back to allow for daylight to penetrate. Note the additional set of brackets beneath attached to the roof, separated by shims from those projecting from the shaft. (Photograph by Chris Jooste)

10 Detail of aperture for daylight to fall on the proposed statue. 11 Photograph from north-west (Afrikanerbakens, 2006: 118. Photographer: Hendrik

Oosthuysen).

reira, 1975:255) to which Hallen retorted that the project needed no working drawings; he prepared and supervised all detailing in the engineer’s drawing office (email, 21 February 2012).

GENEALOGY OF FORM AND MEANINGThe controlling idea of the Winburg monument was the laager with wagons, which transform as shafts to ascend dramatically and terminate to evoke horns of draught oxen (Biermann, 1981:42), while spouts penetrate from the low binding roof through the intercolumniations. Yet, in this three-dimensional sculptural ab-straction one senses a richness of references, some to works of Le Corbusier, who died in 1965 as the design development of the Winburg monument was underway, and some to Hallen’s own works.

On graduating, Hallen spent 1956 in the employ of the Archi-tects’ Department of the London County Council. This depart-ment had absorbed and modified ideas imparted from the Conti-nent, e.g. Roehampton in which it made credible reinterpretations of Le Corbusier’s Unité (Curtis, 1996:153) and, it was while in this employ that Hallen gained experience in working with off-shut-ter concrete (email, 26 January 2012). Once in private practice in Durban with Maurice Dibb from 1959, Hallen’s architecture de-veloped along a ‘London’ trajectory and he distinguished himself with a series of medium-rise apartment blocks on Durban’s Berea, e.g. Stellenberg (1962), Drostdy and Musgrave Mews (1963) and Riebeeck and Bellevue (1964), the last of which made extensive use of reinforced concrete and was contemporaneous with the Winburg competition.

In all his apartment buildings Hallen separated the staircases from the residential blocks as discrete elements and explored their sculptural forms with slit windows and often also with hooded roofs. For example, the staircase at Riebeeck, (four flights around an open well) is set diagonally to the building and the enclosing side walls project as nibs in the outer corners of the landings to de-fine slit openings, while the parapets echo the double-pitched roof with ridge parallel to the axis of the building. This staircase could be compared with the cluster of shafts and slits at Winburg.

Another comparison is Bellevue in which the landings are semi-circular with slit windows in the centre of the half-round perimeter walls, in the line of the well of the dog-leg stairs, and, different from the executed building with flat roofs before fol-lowing the profile of the flights up, the drawings show the roofs to be splayed upward in one plane from the perimeter landing wall (BBAL). These are the forms that terminate the sliced half-round shafts at Winburg, with which design Hallen was simulta-neously engaged in.

But, the lineage might also be traceable to Le Corbusier, e.g. to the upturned crescents on the rooftops of the Parliament Building and the Governor’s Palace (unbuilt) in Chandigarh, 1951 onwards, which the master ascribed to bulls’ horns, or the astronomical devices of Jantar Mantar, Delhi, of the early 18th century, whom he is said to have admired enormously (Curtis, 1996:433).

The off-shutter finish of the Winburg monument and the recessed lettering of the Voortrekker leaders’ surnames are hallmarks of Le Corbusier. Whether the monument is deemed a further metamorphosis of Hallen’s staircase compositions, suffused with Corbusian elements, or the result of meticu- lously controlled geometric artistry, it set a new level of abstrac-tion and three-dimensional sophistication in South African commemorative architecture.

ADDITIONAL AND OMITTED WORKFortunately the monument was spared controversy, which so often accompanies architectural competitions, but its strategic vision was somewhat compromised. First, the N1 highway was located further westward rendering the monument barely visible to uninitiated motorists, but the scale derived from silos is patent and confirmed in the landscape. Second, the pedestrian access to the monument was moved northward, disengaging visitors from the experience of the water chain at the foot of the bank of the largest bowl, but, in fact, at the cost of the disabled as the ramp was replaced with a staircase. However, this intervention appears to have been embarked upon after completion and in

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ignorance when funds for hard surfacing of a path became available.

While under construction, the VVMK resurrected an idea mooted before the competition, namely to complement the cottage with an open-air museum. Hallen carefully studied the typologies of both settler and indigenous vernacular archi-tectures of the Free State, and proposed that these line the brow of the natural theatre of the site while keeping the monument on the knoll as its focus. This did not go ahead, but to accommodate the crowds who would attend the inau-guration and the annual Day of the Vow celebrations, Hallen designed an open-air auditorium. This was realised to seat 9 000 (Ferreira, 1975:260) in three banks of parallel rows of low walls on the natural gradient east of the monument, with any spoil going towards the shaping of the water bowls (email, 21 February 2012), which in the execution became lined with rubble. No photographs could be

len was to put forward proposals with a budget covering a maquette, artist’s fees and so on. Yet, it was also resolved that the matter be kept in abeyance until the completion of construction includ-ing paving (Minutes of the VVMK, 22 August 1967). The souvenir brochure issued at the inauguration almost a year later re-confirms the incorporation of a ‘work of sculpture of a Voortrekker woman’ in the courtyard, as the space was referred to (p11). Four months later in February 1969, after the inaugura-tion, the VVMK disbanded. Whether the question of a statue ever resurfaced could not be established but, certainly, no statue ever inhabited the monument.

According to Hallen the item was

found showing that water ever discharged from the spouts into the bowls, nor from the bowls down the water chain, but the monument had to serve its purpose inde-pendently – which it does.

THE STATUEDespite the careful integration of the statue, strangely, the assessors deemed its placing ‘arbitrary, unless it could be brought into a sensible association with the lettering on the bronze plaque’ (SAAR, August 1965:30). This comment and the symbolism of the ‘protective space’ might have prompted a re-consideration.

At a meeting as late as 22 August 1967 when the tender for construction was accepted, the VVMK resolved that Hal-

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12 The outer brass ring marked the commencement of the project in 1967 and the inner disc the inauguration in 1968 (Afrikanerbakens, 2006: 119. Photographer: Hendrik Oosthuysen).

13 Spouts emerging as virtual cannons at the base of the monument.

14 Staircase tower as a discrete element at Riebeeck, 208 Problem Mkhize (Cowey) Rd, Durban. Architects: Hallen & Dibb, 1964.

15 Proposed open-air museum of indigenous and settler vernacular typologies including the hartbeesthuis and the kapstylhuis replete with bakoond and kookskerm on the brow of the Winburg site with the Voortrekker monument as its focus (BBAL).

16 The protective inner space (beskutte binneruimte) of the ’laager’ centred about the oculus and the missing plaque.

‘endlessly deferred until it was generally agreed that the statue was not needed’ (email, 26 March 2012). The climax of a visit to Winburg is thus not a sarcophagus like the Preto-ria monument, but the beskutte binneruimte itself – the shad-ed, secluded and protective shelter that, at the heart of the monument, should singularly communicate the role of the women. This space, replete with the ‘descending benedic-tory light’ (Bunn, 1998:106) that naturally illuminates the tab-leau on the floor, and the view offered heavenward through the oculus, collectively provide the monument with a sense of immanence. However, after the theft of the plaque em-bedded in the floor one can only wonder what a statue in the secluded interior might have had to endure.

THE NEW GENERATION OF MONUMENTS OF COMMEMORATIONThe assessors of the Winburg competition were taken by the choice of crescent-shaped shafts (skulpvorme), which they sub-mitted were at the apex of contemporary structural design. They termed these the ‘modern equivalent’ of the orders of an-tiquity, round arches of Roman architecture, pointed arches of Gothic and the steel frame of the 19th century, and concluded that the ‘leap to such independent forms from the inevitable concrete wagons and marble oxen in a static immovable laager is huge’ and served to ‘immediately ... distinguish the submis-sion’ (SAAR, August 1965:30). That was the breakthrough and mould for the new generation of commemorative monuments in South Africa.

But for the 1820 (English) Settlers’ Monument in Graham-stown (1966–74), which was designed as a utilitarian memorial with cultural, educational and conference functions, the bal-ance of monuments erected in the two succeeding decades simply commemorated Afrikaner deeds. The next important one of these was the Afrikaans Language (Taal) Monument in Paarl, also the subject of an architectural competition, held two years later in 1966 and won by Jan van Wijk (1926–2005).

Its concept is similar to Winburg, with a powerful symbolic form that Van Wijk acknowledged owed a debt to Hallen (email, 28 February 2012), but it is more elaborate in its experience and com-mand of the mountain-top site, which it meets with an organic architectural response. Interesting too is that one of two honorary mentions was accorded the entry by Barrie Biermann. Although this design could not be located, obviously Biermann led by example, being not only an assessor of taste but its promoter as a teacher and designer too.

However, what began as a trickle of Afrikaner memorialisation soon became a floodxii. While the Irish Monument by Jan van Wijk, Johannesburg, 1973–5, might still be seen as a successor to the abstract stimulus set at Winburg, the design of the Strijdom Monument, Pretoria, by Interplan Architects, inaugurated in 1972, even if freed from any obvious historical Afrikaner symbolism, is a re-appropriation of a foreign example. It was termed a ‘Brazilian influence blended with a new monumentality’ as it was literally based on Oscar Niemeyer’s unbuilt monument to Ruy Barboza, Rio de Janeiro, 1950 (Gerneke, 1998:218). However, this is not an article of critique of Afrikaner monuments; rather, it aims to place the significance of Hallen’s Winburg monument in its genealogical perspective.

MONUMENT AND ARCHITECT TODAY While in the New South Africa 16 December remains a pub-lic holiday as the ‘Day of Reconciliation’, the site at Winburg appears to have long last witnessed any geloftefees ceremonies. Custodianship remains in the hands of the provincial authori-ties and the site is inaccessible as the gates are kept locked without any note of explanation. The water chain lies dry, the pump room accommodated in the banks of the knoll is abandoned and the outdoor theatre overgrown. To the uninitiated the maze of trenches must look weird, but as these were dug open due to the theft of the cables buried therein, the absence of the floodlights affixed to the brims of bowls is of little consequence. But the theft of the central bronze plaque is unconscionable and deeply lamentable.

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17 Taalmonument, Paarl. Architect: Jan van Wijk, 1966-75. (Afrikanerbakens, 2006: 54. Photographer: Hendrik Oosthuysen)

18 The abandoned water chain of precast elements. 19 The deserted open-air theatre of low parallel seating

walls east of the monument, also designed by Hallen. 17 18

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The late architectural historian Spiro Kostof concluded that ‘[p]ure invention is rare in architecture, and originality more commonly manifests itself in the purposeful adjustment of traditional forms’ (1995:192). In the case of the Winburg monu-ment, the forms are certainly not traditional, and the abstract interpretation of the laager, the qualities of shelter and striving, and their manifestation in the material of the day put this monu-ment of commemoration, in the early phase of Hallen’s careerxiii, in the realms of pure invention.

While the Pretoria Voortrekker monument has recently been declared a National Heritage Site, one cannot but conclude that its counterpart at Winburg has stood still. Yet, almost half a cen-tury on, the structure itself remains in excellent condition with minimal spalling, and should survive even though the township has expanded in the direction of the monument, despite the earlier assurances. Fortunately it is well built and requires mini-mal maintenance, for it might take a long time before a critical mass of sympathisers can be found to save it from its otherwise insidious path to ruination.

Walter Peters, Professor of Architecture at the University of the Free State, gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Hans and June Hallen; Milek and Shirley Masojada; Michele Jacobs of the Barrie Biermann Architecture Library, University of KwaZulu-Natal; and Johan Meyer, Professor of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of the Free State.

This work is based upon research supported by the National Research Foun-dation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and therefore the NRF does not accept any liability in regard thereto.

REFERENCESBarrie Biermann Architecture Library (BBAL), University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Biermann, B (1981) Hans Hallen. Gold Medallist 1979/80. Architecture SA, Winter, 40-47.Bunn, D (1998) White Sepulchres: On the Reluctance of Monuments. In Judin, H & Vladislavi, I Blank_ Architecture, Apartheid and After. Cape Town: David Philip & Rotterdam: NAi, 93-117. Curtis, W (1996) Modern Architecture since 1900. London: Phaidon.De Haan, H & Haagsma, I (1988) Architects in Competition. London: Thames & Hudson. Ferreira, O (1975) ‘n Volk se Hulde. Doornfontein: Perskor.Ferreira, O (1989) Die Voortrekkermonument, Winburg. In Afrikaner-bakens. Auckland Park: FAK, 117-118. Free State Provincial Archives (FSPA), Bloemfontein (PAW 28, B231/1/1). Gerneke, G (1998) ‘From Brazil to Pretoria’. In Fisher, R & Le Roux, S with Maré, E. Architecture of the Transvaal. Pretoria: UNISA, 196-229.Kostof, S (1995) A History of Architecture – Settings and Rituals. New York: Oxford University Press.Pevsner, N (1976) A History of Building Types. London: Thames & Hud-son.Picton-Seymour, D (1989) Historical Buildings in South Africa. Cape Town: Struikhof.Prysvraag: Voortrekkermonument Winburg (1965) South African Architec-tural Record, August, 28-30.Souvenir Programme. Voortrekker Monument Winburg. Inauguration 10th October 1968. 16p. Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa (SESA)(1973). Cape Town: NASOU. Watson, W (2007) Brick by Brick – An Informal Guide to the History of South Africa. Claremont: New Africa.

END NOTESi In 1929 the Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret organisation founded in 1918, spawned a public ‘front’, the Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultu-urvereniginge, an umbrella body to co-ordinate and guide the work of Afrikaner cultural groups [Worden, N (1998) A Concise Dictionary of SA History. Cape Town: Francolin]. ii Pietermaritzburg, Weenen, Danskraal at Ladysmith, Blood River, Blijdevooruitzicht at Harrismith, Thaba Nchu, Winburg, Vegkop at Heilbron, Potchefstroom, Pretoria and Ohrigstad (Ferreira, 1975:27-28). iii In 1962 a modern place of worship was built in Pietermaritzburg by architect Paul le Roux of Stellenbosch within the precinct of the Church of the Vow, long in use as a museum.iv After serving as mayor of Bloemfontein, 1949-50, and rising up the ranks of the provincial National Party, sand merchant Mr JWJC (Sand) Du Plessis was appointed Administrator of the Orange Free State in 1959, a position he held for a further term until 1969. v With the prospect of incorporating a Voortrekker monument on the site, the town clerk of Winburg sought the advice of Johannes-burg-based town planner Max Kirchhofer. In his report following an in loco inspection on 8 November 1963, Kirchofer waxed lyrical, ‘[...at] Winburg one became conscious of the transition from the central plains to the north-eastern plateau of the Free State ... [it was] one of those rare instances in the wide-flung landscape of the highveld where separate features gather into a close-knit, expressive, balanced group’. It was a ‘...happy co-incidence that a site due to be developed for its historical significance should be set in so well shaped a landscape’. This was a bowl with a knoll at the confluence of two streams [of the Laaispruit] flowing into the [Rietfontein] dam, which ‘lent itself ad-mirably as the base for the monument, [and] would be the accent of the whole layout’, and Kirchofer advised that the memorial site be conceived in harmony with the strongly moulded landscape. The ‘overriding criterium’ (sic) he wrote, would be ‘exercise of control over the use of the land within the topographical entity of the “bowl”, in short that the landscape remains unspoilt [sic] as far as one can see’ (FSPA, PAW 28, B231/1/1). It was agreed that this report could be made available to entrants of the competition, but whether that happened could not be ascertained. vi Uytenbogaardt was busy with the technical development of the NGK church at Welkom-West, 1963–4. vii Having recently returned from the Kahn master class and accepted a position at the University of Natal, Theron accompanied Hallen to submit his entry in Bloemfontein (KZNIAJ 2-2001, 4).viii Second prize went to EJ Bloem of Kroonstad; third prizes each to Albert te Groen and Botha, Meyer & Lotter of Pretoria and James Watson of Johannesburg; while the model by Beyers Hartmann of Kroonstad came in for special mention as did the skilful documen-tation of Anton du Toit of Pretoria and the symbolism in the submis-sion by LM Holzapfel, also of Pretoria. ix The translation was prepared by Hallen’s Afrikaner wife, June, née Meiring (email).x See Peters, W (2003) ‘The Architecture of the Blockhouses of the Anglo-Boer SA War, 1899-1902. Part 2: Rice Pattern’. Architecture SA, July/Aug, 44-53.xi While the names of the leaders on the shafts might suggest the direction of the respective treks or the sizes of the parties, Hallen dismisses any correlation between destination or size of trekker party; the composition was driven by artistic considerations, he insists (email, 7 February 2012). xii See Afrikanerbakens. Auckland Park: FAK, 1989. xiii For the next two decades Hallen’s architecture was in the fore-front, unassailably in (KwaZulu-) Natal, and he balanced practice with leadership, serving as ISAA President-in-Chief 1974–5, receiving its Gold Medal in 1980, and he was the first to represent ISAA on UIA. At the prime of his career, Hallen immigrated to Sydney in 1987, aged 57, in retrospect, as the miracle of the New South Africa was coming into focus. Regardless, he later quipped philosophically: ‘Buildings stand still, people move’ (KZNIA Journal, 2/1997, p8).

In the 1975 publication Age of the Masters, Reyner Banham presented a personal view of modern architecture. He described the modern movement as an architectural revolution that visibly affected people’s lives. According to Banham, new ways of thinking about existing structural solutions resulted in the new forms. Today architecture is in need of a similar revolution, one that focuses on reducing resource consumption in the built environment.

BY JACQUES LAUBSCHER

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: OZMIK HOUSEThe Royal Norwegian Embassy, Inno-vation Norway and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation are located in Ozmik House. According to Arca Architects and Designers (Arca) they were challenged by this project to express a distinct design identity through built form on a highly visible site along Lynnwood Road, bordering the suburbs of Hillcrest and Brooklyn in Pretoria.

Inus Goussard and Faan Nel of Arca believe that the built product represents a regional design character as well as being sustainable. This design resulted from studying the existing context and marrying it with Norwegian and Swiss design culture.

Planning restrictions determined the north-eastern site entrance, resulting in an L-shaped building. The pivotal north-western corner is emphasised by a curved concrete corner. This part accom-modates the visa reception and service area on the ground floor with the confer-ence room being housed on the first floor. The resulting east-west floor plate was addressed by using material mass, per-formance glazing, and the implementa-tion of a secondary louvered skin. On the northern side the relationship between boundary and threshold is explored through function, level and massing.

ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGYArca follows a design strategy of local eco-consciousness. It is argued that a building’s main function is to provide shelter and comfort. However, the ar-chitect should remain conscious of the design’s impact on the environment. Unfortunately this awareness comes at a price, and for Ozmik House it is esti-mated at 10–15% of the overall budget. The established rapport between Ozmik Property Investments and Arca facili-tated this investment. Rashid Aboobaker of Ozmik Property Investments says: ‘We are all committed to promoting responsi-ble development and to carrying knowl-edge from Ozmik House forward to new ventures.’ Additionally, Aboobaker sees Ozmik House as the flagship develop-ment to promote the continued working relationship with Arca.

Arca believes in designing for a chang-ing environment. According to Goussard, passive sustainable concepts and uncom-plicated technical resolutions were inte-gral to the design process for this project. This approach is illustrated in Ozmik

House in the following ways:• Allowing for future expansion to

accommodate increased space re-quirements or additional tenants;

• Selecting materials according to their sustainability index;

• Introducing passive environmental control; and

• Installing energy efficient services to limit resource consumption.

FUTURE EXPANSIONThe completed building allows for fu-ture expansion in a variety of ways. The lightweight metal roof could be raised with steel columns to introduce addi-tional floor area. This would be support-ed by extending the existing circulation and service cores. Providing additional basement parking allows for more build-ing occupants. Except for service areas, all finishes to floors and ceilings were treated as continuous planes. A modular screwless partitioning system demarcates the cellular office spaces, but it allows for future adjustment and removal to suit changing needs.

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MATERIAL SELECTIONAccording to Banham, the modern mas-ters were sensitive about materials, and it was this sensitivity that allowed simple materials to produce sophisticated struc-tures. A similar material sensitivity is evi-dent in this project. In example, bamboo was selected as a sustainable alternative to other natural timbers. However, the inherent properties of bamboo were also investigated, resulting in • using bamboo as an applied floor- and

windowsill finish; • using bamboo structurally as treads

for the staircase; • manufacturing the handrails and

screens from bamboo; and • designing modular bamboo panels

to be used in conjunction with traditional suspended ceilings.

PASSIVE ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROLThe significant east-west orientation was addressed by introducing screens as a secondary skin to the building. These screens respond differently to the vari-ous degrees of sun exposure. The result-ant effect of this skin is the diffusion of the sunlight while minimising glare and heat gain. The narrow floor plate allows for maximum penetration of natural light, thereby reducing the need for ar-tificial lighting. The design strategy ap-proaches ambient lighting as a resource to be supplemented by artificial lighting. To achieve proper integration between

natural and artificial light, lux meters were used to measure luminance in the workplace. By using movement sensors, the relevant lighting system is activated by occupancy. Lighting armature selec-tion was restricted to compact fluores-cent lights (CFLs), fluorescent lights (FLs) and light emitting diodes (LEDs). Movable lamps were used for ask- oriented lighting at the workstations. External lighting was minimised to re-duce light pollution. The semi-basement parking is naturally lit and ventilated. A refuse recycling area is provided in the basement, encouraging reduction of waste diverted to landfill. This facility is managed by a local recycling company. Performance glazing with insulated alu-minium frames was used throughout to lessen heat gain. Double-glazing was used to reduce noise disturbance on Lynnwood Road. The façade glazing was made up of double-glazed units. Open-ings to the exterior were fitted with self-closing mechanisms to assist with the indoor climate control.

Low-flow sanitary fittings and water-less urinals were installed throughout. Rainwater is harvested and used to water the indigenous landscape.

ENERGY-EFFICIENT SERVICESIn conventional office buildings the mechanical ventilation system is largely accountable for the energy consumed. In Ozmik House a variable refrigerant vol-ume (VRV) air-conditioning system was

1 Typical section2 View from south east3 First floor plan4 Ground floor plan5 Entrance6 View from north west

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installed. By installing motion sensors, independent zone control is possible for the four main functional zones. On the other hand, the climate to cellular offices is controlled individually. Exhaust risers extract pollutants from all printing areas.

CONCLUSIONOzmik House serves as an example of environmental strategy and the sensitive use of material producing a sophisticated product. In the words of Banham, the resultant architecture is visibly affecting people’s lives.

PROJECT TEAM:Client: Ozmik Property Investments (Pty) LtdArchitects: Arca Architects & DesignersArchitectural Team: Inus Goussard, Faan Nel, Barend HattinghPhotos: Gunther Gräter, JP Hanekom, Drawings and Illustrations: Inus GoussardStructural and Civil engineers: Liebenberg, Jenkins & Partners Inc.Mechanical and Electrical engineers: KKA Consulting Electrical Engineers ccQuantity Surveyor: McLachlan du Plooy Midway (Pty) LtdLandscape Design: Allingham Environmental ArchitectureContractor: GD Irons Construction (Pty) Ltd

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I GREW UP IN A SLUM. Which is fun-ny, and at the same time not. It’s funny, because I spent my entire pre-school and school years living in Umhlanga by the sea. It was, to be sure, an idyllic and privileged place to grow up, with sugar-cane fi elds and bird-fi lled jungles nearby, bringing an edginess to the suburbia it was. But of course, it was the beach that was about the best thing that can ever happen to a kid – endless days of sum-mer-through-winter bodysurfi ng and surfi ng, a paradise.

But I can’t escape the fact that I grew up in a slum. It was not a district or an area, just a house. A slum house. And it was a perfect house – it had a gable and a big garden for hoopoes and paradise fl ycatchers and trees for vervet monkeys. The thing is, when my parents got di-vorced my grandparents made a plan and turned the half-level below their house into a second dwelling for my mum, me and my three siblings. My brother and I shared a room, as did my sisters, but my mother? Well, rather than moving us all to a block of fl ats on the Durban beach-front, she decided to sacrifi ce her comfort for our youth – she spent nearly ten years sleeping without windows in the passage leading to the bathroom.

In 1935 the Slums Act fi nally resolved a vexing dilemma for the policing of the built environment and society at large. For years the British administra-tors in Cape Town – following the lead of London – had tried to get a handle on what constitutes a slum. Before 1935 they knew one when they saw one, they knew it in their gentrifi ed bones. Of course it was mixed up with all the class and thence racial prejudices of the Age of Empire. Medical Offi cers of Health and City Engineers looked for reasons in the poorer neighbourhoods to dis-criminate against the city’s ‘others’ and to have them removed from the city centre. They found them – the reasons and these ‘others’ – within the visually derelict and discombobulated buildings of District Six and other parts of ‘Old Cape Town’. Before 1935 the city bureaucrats took

things at face value and read within the decaying surfaces of buildings signs of ne-glect and social inferiority; unpainted and spalling walls were a sign of the unkempt and degenerate inhabitants whose fraying clothing confi rmed their lack of goodness and moral strength rather than indicated the scourge of poverty and rack-renting. Everyone understood that an ugly building housed ugly people.

But it was impossible to prove this and it was entirely contestable – ‘luckily’ the age of modernity had always been bubbling under this Age of Empire. It had been wait-ing to reveal the true ambitions of English cultural domination and it did this through measurement and science – indisputable science, where a slum became categori-cally defi nable and measurable through the Slums Act of 1935. Suddenly the Medical Offi cer of Health had unequivocal proof of a slum’s existence, for example, if there weren’t enough cubic feet of air related to the number of inhabitants intended for the room, or if two siblings of opposite sex shared the same room after either turned 12 years old, or if, for example, someone slept in a corridor or a room without ventila-tion or windows.

Which brings us back to my mother. Her sacrifi ce was bigger than simply having her privacy compromised daily. It was that she made herself a law-breaker, albeit an unknowing one, to protect her children and to give them the best life possible. These laws persist in our building regulations, which people break out of necessity all the time even after the powers have inspired – aspired – them to a ‘better life for all’ through the ‘eradication of slums’ and the provision of existenz minimum housing. And the prejudice against ‘slum-dwellers’ continues. It is in our housing policies being led by national government. And it is in the everyday attitudes of ordinary citizens. I doubt that many architects still believe what the Empire-era British taught us, that only the morally corrupt don’t care for their appearances, and inversely, that corrupt appearances indicate a corrupt soul. We know that in ‘informal settlements’ and ‘slums’ are some of our country’s best citizens; these houses of makeshift assembly are often a sure sign of indescribable resolve and self-sacrifi ce – simply, to provide a better life for one’s children.

SLUMDWELLERSBY NIC COETZER

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THE ‘HERITAGE EFFECT’BY NOËLEEN MURRAY, UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE

IN THE 2008 revision of the widely known volume from the 1980s, New South African Keywords, in the chapter entitled ‘Heritage’, Nick Shepherd suggests:

‘...rather than thinking about heritage as a set of objects, it may be more useful to think of it as a set of effects... What we might call the ‘heritage effect’ lies in edging us towards essentialised notions of culture and identity. Heritage weighs down on the side of reification. It places notions of culture and identity beyond critique...’1

In order to trace the ‘heritage effect’ (after Shepherd who cites Kirschenblatt-Gimblett), it is useful to think of the genealogy of the emergence of the term ‘heritage’ in South Africa. Aside from some usage in archaeology and the Afrikaans term erfinis (meaning heritage or inheritance) the word is noticeably absent from earlier discourses and practices of conservation in architecture and in urban conservation.2 Tracing the history of the word, it seems to make an appearance following the promulgation of the National Heritage Resources Act (NHRA November 1999) largely replacing the word ‘conservation’, which had gained preference from the 1980s onwards under the influence of leading practitioners and academics.3

This emergence is perhaps not that surprising, as the NHRA contained a new category of work, through the new requirements for heritage impact assessments, for which the specific skills of the conservation architect or planner seemed to be a perfect fit. Very soon, in response to the need to formulate a set of specifications, practices and codes, a group made up largely of architects,

archaeologists, landscape architects and urban designers was started in Cape Town. The group, going by the acronym AHAP (Association of Heritage Practitioners), began from the early 2000s onwards to create membership structures, hold meetings and position its members for the work that was beginning to flow in the form of Heritage Impact Assessments (HIAs). Cape Town has since been widely hailed by practitioners elsewhere in the country as the city in which the best heritage practice is taking place. As part of establishing AHAP, a list soon began to circulate of ‘accredited’ practitioners. Local authorities, professional bodies, developers and private clients all began to employ and recommend heritage practitioners whose names appeared on the ‘AHAP List’ in the Western Cape.4 The exact process through which practitioners’ names came to be included in the list was linked to appropriate qualifications and membership of the voluntary association. Membership was granted in one of three categories: Generalist, Specialist or Associate. In this manner it appeared as if AHAP had successfully completed the process of establishing and institutionalising a select set of specialised heritage competencies. However, the group’s move to create heritage accreditation operates outside of the governing authority of the then newly formed South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and its accredited membership reflected in the list has no real status. Yet its continued circulation in practice and its adoption by major institutions of authority has become problematic as its membership

has come to be racially polarised, hardly attracting key practitioners and graduates outside of the spatial disciplines in any significant numbers.5 In addition, the conceptualisations of heritage in the realm of the built environment as practised by these professionals has tended to continue to give prominence to settler and colonial buildings and urban spaces. The heritage effect of AHAP has, perhaps inadvertently, produced a set of exclusions from its newly invented field of heritage practice.

One of these exclusions has been over considering the position of modern architecture as heritage, and this has had a profound effect on heritage practices post-apartheid. Over the last decade or so, international heritage groupings such as ICOMOS and DOCOMOMO have begun to address the incorporation of modernist architecture into a new category of heritage significance.6 Most of the initiatives aimed at the preservation and protection of modern architecture have been motivated through rationales around their modernist design, as a way of according them a place in national listings of heritage buildings.7 These groups view modern architecture as historical and representative of a particular period of building. Restoration and adaptive reuse projects have been encouraged as a means of conserving these buildings. To a very large extent these preservation projects have been successful in the economically buoyant centres of Western Europe and North America where benevolent benefactors have contributed towards their restoration. Much like modern art, these buildings have been celebrated for their avant garde qualities and their adherence to the heroic aspects of the project of modernism. While modern architecture has certainly taken its place alongside other older forms of architecture internationally as a new form of heritage concern, in general the problematising of modern architecture’s modernities has hardly been considered in any systematic manner by architects, especially in South Africa.

Post-apartheid South Africa has seen new forms of heritage practice emerge in the spatial disciplines, alongside older forms of the preservation, restoration and conservation of buildings and urban spaces.

Instead of posing a systematic set of questions about the relationships between modern architecture and the apartheid period, essentialised notions of culture and architecture appear to have been preferred by architects in constructing arguments for new forms of heritage practice. Two examples in South Africa, dating back to 2006/7, illustrate this point – the cases of the Werdmuller Centre in Claremont, Cape Town and the proposed Kopanong Gauteng Provincial Government Precinct in central Johannesburg. In the Johannesburg case, the reconceptualisation of the Johannesburg city centre for the Kopanong Gauteng Provincial Government Precinct raised issues around modern and art deco architecture from the early years of the twentieth century. The arguments presented in architect Fanuel Motsepe’s scheme for redevelopment and demolition contained an idea of redress in the colonial city, asserting the insertion of what was claimed to be more African (specifically Tswana) space-making principles.8 In reaction the groups formed to oppose the development argued for the architectural qualities of the ten buildings under question as key examples of their period.9 In Cape Town the case for saving the Werdmuller centred on the architectural significance of the building as a key example of esteemed practitioner Roelof Uytenbogaardt’s body of work. The arguments in these two instances of debate, around modern architectures’ presences in the post-apartheid city in South Africa, point to many useful comparisons around the processes through which these debates took place. In both cases ethnicised notions of space-making were invoked as motivations for the development – in the Johannesburg case it was Tswana architecture and space-making, and in Cape Town the case was made around the democratic souk-like quality of the space as an argument for the retention of the building.10 These ideas of African-ness and the souk as precedent deployed a culturally inspired argument for each

project. In each case the ethnicised motivations were aimed at motivating for relevance in the postcolonial, post-apartheid present, mobilised in some way to argue (although obliquely) against the European-influenced colonial forms commonly used by architects previously.

In both cases too, these arguments were used despite radically different spatial manifestations evident in their designs. At the Werdmuller the Corbusian brutalist modernism dominates the idea of the souk, stylistically obliterating the idea from all but those in the know.

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In the Johannesburg case the stylistic language of the architecture is even more baffling, given the claims to African-ness, where postmodernist forms drawn from the classical forms of ancient Greece and Rome are scattered over the space in what appears to be a random manner.11

The slippage between the arguments that have been used in these recent cases, and their material imaginaries, seems to highlight the confusion around the relationship between language and spatial form. This points, perhaps, to the troubled nature and limits of debate about heritage and spatial identity in the spatial disciplines in the post-apartheid city, where new ideas are used to rationalise old forms and in doing so produce the heritage effect described by Shepherd.

END NOTES1. Shepherd, N. 2008. ‘Heritage’ in Shepherd, N. and Robins, S. 2008 (eds) New South African Keywords, Jacana Books an Ohio University Press, Johannesburg and Athens. p.125.2. Merrington, Peter, 1997, ‘Heritage, Geneal-ogy, and the inventing of Union, South Africa, 1910’, Africa Seminar, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 7 May.3. The most prominent of these were Derek and Vivienne Japha and Fabio Todeschini. 4. Association of Heritage Assessment Practition-ers – Accredited Members: as at August 2007, AHAP Western Cape, fax 021 650 2352, email ahapwc@age.uct.ac.za: 16 August 2007. 5. By way of example, the 2007 list does not contain one graduate of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies’ Diploma in Museum and Heritage Studies, offered by Rob-ben Island Museum and the University of the Western Cape.6. Fisher, R., Le Roux, H., Murray, N. and Sand-ers, P., 2003, ‘The modern movement architec-ture of four South African cities’, doco.mo.mo Journal, 28, March: 68–76: 69.7. Van Oers, R. and Haraguchi, S. 2003, UNESCO World Heritage Papers 5, Identification and Docu-mentation of Modern Heritage, Published in 2003 by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre.8. Bremner, Lindsay, 2005, Designs should reflect Jo’burg’s diversity, Sunday Independent, Novem-ber 27, 2005 Edition 1. 9. Fraser, Neil, 2005 ‘Kopanong’http://architecta-frica.com/bin0/KopanongIndex.html (accessed 5 October 2005, 20h46).10. Werdmuller Blogspot, http://werdmullercen-tre.blogspot.com/2008/01/werdmuller-centre-main-road-claremont.html (last accessed 22 June 2009 13h50).11. Bremner, 2005; Rassool, C, 2006, (Chairper-son) Report of the Commission of Inquiry for SAHRA, SAHRA Archives Johannesburg.

The modernist shopping centre inspired by the idea of the souk; view of internal street space in a run-down and empty state in 2009.

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Architect’s impression. Proposals for the Kopanong Provincial Government Precinct in Johannesburg, 2004. Source: City of Johannesburg website, ‘It’s not 5 buildings for demolition, but 10!’ – Tuesday, 13 January 2004.

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