Corobrik Recognises 25 Years of Architectural Excellence

A project that highlights imagination and intelligent design – a unique, creative ability to combine the two to create a project that nevertheless treads lightly on our earth. This is how Corobrik’s managing director, Dirk Meyer, described the project entitled Magazine Hill:  A weathered continuum that came up tops in the 2012 Corobrik Architectural Student of the Year Awards.

Through their 25 year sponsorship of the event, Meyer said that Corobrik had had a front row seat when it came to witnessing the evolution of South Africa’s architectural profession and the important role architects play as custodians of our built environment.

“25 years ago, these awards were created to promote excellence in design and to acknowledge emerging talent among architectural students. Today, the challenges facing architects and ultimately the students who will be the future crafters of our cities’ built environments is increasingly complex, demanding a competence in art, tectonics, science, building regulations, socio-economics and finance, in order to come up with design solutions that fit the budget, massage or engage the visual senses, inspire and address the social and environmental issues of the day”.

This year’s winner, Clifford Gouws, through his project ‘Magazine Hill: A Weathered Continuum’ concentrates on an abandoned historical military site on Magazine Hill in Pretoria. The site consists of two underground ammunition magazines and five bomb shelters and ammunition factories – all structures representing an era of unrest in South Africa. In 1945, a mysterious explosion of the Central Magazine scarred the face of Magazine Hill, abruptly stopping all activities on the site, trapping architecture in time.

The project places contemporary commemorative architecture under the limelight, criticizing the static notion of heritage commemoration through the typologies of museums and memorials. Gouws’ architectural response focuses on commemoration through everyday use. A brass foundry is proposed to recycle the spent ammunition shells of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), thereby introducing brass artists as a public interface. Where ammunition was once produced, it will now be reduced, exposing different layers of the past by reinstating a connection between architecture and time.

Professor Karel Bakker from the University of Pretoria described the winning project as a strong, adaptive re-use design that recycled an industrial foundry which has a contentious history. “It commemorates an event, conserves embodied energy, revives traditional techniques and provides work opportunities, being simultaneously rich in historic references and extremely contemporary in expression that is contextually rooted.  The design creates spaces and makes place for, and provides a rich cultural destination for Tshwane.”

Gouws took home a prize of R50 000 from Corobrik to add to his regional winnings of R6 000.

The judging panel comprised President of the KwaZulu-Natal Institute for Architecture, Nina Saunders, Senior Researcher, Sustainable Human Settlements at the Built-Environment Unit of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research at Pretoria University, Architect Dr Amira Osman and award winning architect Jeremy Rose of Mashabane Rose Architects.