Architecture 2012 highs and lows

WORDS Marine Leblond

The Velodrome, Aquatic Centre, Gardens by the Bay, the Red Museum and more… We take a whistle-stop tour through the architecture 2012 highs and lows, in South Africa and the world.

Although 2012 was an Olympic year, there was relatively little noise around the new London sport facilities – nothing comparable to, for example, the display of wonders for the Beijing 2008 Summer Games. It is probably the result of a pragmatic approach, emphasising long-term use and economical design rather than mind- (and budget-) blowing extravagances. Nonetheless two buildings stand out, though rather opposed in their design: Hopkins Architects’s toned-down Velodrome and Zaha Hadid’s typically fluid Aquatic Centre.

Maybe the British Olympic park was shadowed by another monumental infrastructure, which – as far as I have read – has wowed every critic and visitor when it opened last year: the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. It comprises gigantic hi-tech tropical gardens by the sea, punctuated by the awesome Supertrees, as well as series of cooled conservatories by Willkinson Eyre, which were elected Building of the Year 2012 by the World Architecture Festival jury.

Another Building of the Year 2012 title was bestowed on our very own Red Location Museum by Jo Noero in Port Elizabeth, this time by Icon Magazine. Jo is the hero of the year for SA architecture, as he was also the only African invited to participate in the International Architecture Exhibition, the main programme at the Venice Biennale. His practice Noero Wolff Architects also recently split into Noero Architects, and Wolff Architects. This means twice as much to look forward to for us, really. (Two other South African architects, Johann Slee and Pieter Mathews, participated in the Traces of the Century and Future Steps exhibition.)

A few other local realisations attracted international attention: the much talked about Babylonstoren and its neo-romantic gardens in the Cape Winelands; the fab prefab Westcliffe pavilion by GASS Architecture Studio; and the small-cost, big-hearted New Jerusalem Children’s Home in Midrand.

As for the good-byes, 2012 was marked by the loss of two architectural geniuses. Oscar Niemeyer died aged 104. If the body gave up, his visionary and joyful mind was at work until his last days. Oscar was the last modern master, who dreamt and realised the utopian city of Brazilia and nearly 600 buildings over the world. He was a convinced communist who built indulging bourgeois abodes, a modernist who surrendered functionalist principles to his love of “free and sensual curves. The curves we find in mountains, in the waves of the sea, in the body of the woman we love.” He inscribed them like a poet in elegant shapes of white concrete.

We also mourn the passing og radical paper architect Lebbeus Woods. Although he only completed one building, in the last year of his life, he leaves behind an extraordinary collection of intricate drawings and models, a body of work made of alternative universes. His post-apocalyptic visions sought new ways of experiencing spaces and cities. His quest, for himself and thinkers around him, was for discomfort – a challenging position in which the mind cannot be at rest. He has been a huge inspiration, cult even, to many avant-garde architects. Like a character from the worlds he created, he passed away in Manhattan while around him the hurricane was taking over the metropolis, the streets flooding and the lights going out. His voice still lives in cyberspace, on the blog he started a few years ago.

Finally, for those who attended the ArchitectureZA 2012 conference in Cape Town and specifically Rahul Mehrotra’s lecture remain, in retrospect, a highlight of the year. One of these events that sticks with you for a while, and maybe even changes you a little.

Marine Leblond is an architect and urbanist. Trained in France, she worked in London and Paris before stopping in Cape Town seven years ago.