WORDS Jankel Nieuwoudt PHOTOS Supplied

Bellville to bourgeois and back again

It’s 2005 and I’m well into my first internship at the studio of a well-known South African architect. The office specialises in highly detailed luxury residential architecture, of the kind that populates the mountainside along the Atlantic Seaboard, all meticulously crafted manually on drawing boards. As a kid from Bellville, I’d never been exposed to this level of wealth before, and I never knew that people in South Africa built houses like these. Beyond the boerewors curtain, our spaces were shaped by various tones of face brick topped with Double Roman roof tiles.

As part of our coursework during the internship, we had to analyse one of the firm’s past projects, and I end up choosing a slick little house composed of mostly steel and glass, situated on the upper slopes of Camps Bay. As I turn off Camps Bay Drive into Woodford Avenue, a ripple floating above the Atlantic horizon catches my eye. Not sure what I just saw, I continue another 30 metres and take a left onto a small panhandle to the chosen house for the coursework. I park in front of a beautiful contemporary piece of architecture and, as I get out of the car and look back towards the mountain, I get a better view of what caught my eye moments ago.

The ripple is a thin, long, undulating parabolic roof, threatening to float away only to be anchored to the mountain by an oversized white chimney contrasted against the dark rocky slopes. I race back up to Woodford Avenue to take a closer look and see a house number – it reads “Die Es 32”. What? People speak Afrikaans in Camps Bay?

Finding the familiar

I soon found out this was my first Gawie Fagan experience, and it was of his own home, hand-built by him and his family. Fast-forward three years, and I’m working full time. I just purchased my first DSLR camera and have ambitions of being the next Julius Shulman. That year, the Open House tours were launched in Cape Town, and they were hosting a Gawie Fagan tour. Camera in hand, I finally get to fully immerse myself in that striking house I saw years ago.

Entering Die Es – it translates to hearth – you are channelled along a skinny dark corridor lined with white plastered walls and stone tiles. It leads to the main living space, bathed in light reflecting off the expansive views across the Atlantic – a volume of very specific scale, bookended by a library and a beautiful courtyard on the sides, a room- sized hearth on the rear, and the Atlantic Ocean framed by large openings with rounded corners at the front.

While I had never experienced anything like this before, it somehow felt familiar. The spaces and materiality contained something that reverberated with my South African sensibilities. It was hard to put my finger on it, but it soon became apparent. We spent a couple of hours there, snapping away, taking it all in. Being able to share the space with Gawie and his wife Gwen, there to answer all our questions, would leave a lasting impression on me.

On the same day, we travelled to the suburb of Fernwood Estate, where Gawie sculpted House Raynham. Gawie stood in the yard with a small crowd around him, explaining to us how the shape of the roof was informed by the mountain it faces. He originally came to the site with a theodolite, and mapped the silhouette of the mountain. A young architect raised her hand and asked, “What’s a theodolite?” Gawie turned to her and, in his quiet voice, said, “I thought you were an architect.”

The roof rising and falling over the simply organised spaces was an exercise in plasticising the rigid forms of traditional roofs. With familiar white walls and brick floors, it was another roof threatening to float away, but restrained by the hearth rooting it to the ground.

Die Es and House Raynham are two very different projects, but they contain the same qualities – a simple diagram for living with a strong connection to nature. But, equally as important, House Raynham continued a familiar built tradition.

The tree doesn’t grow very far from the apple

The South African built environment tradition was inherited from Europe. Our history textbooks were filled with illustrations of the old Cape Dutch buildings, and our primary-school fi eld trips were spent touring their sometimes-haunting spaces. It’s a language we were familiar with, an architecture that represented our origins in this place we call home. If you asked a young, white, middle-class kid of my generation to show you an example of South African architecture, they would most certainly have pointed to their nearest Cape Dutch building or plaashuis.

As young architects, our ambitions were very Euro-centric. We immersed ourselves in architectural books, and in magazines showcasing the latest international architecture trends. Our references for academic projects were very rarely local, and within ourselves grew a sense of dread about the state of our local built fabric and traditions. It’s the typical rebellious teen syndrome, refusing to see the value at home and yearning for the unfamiliar only to find out that our parents were right about many things all along.

The quiet radical

Gawie fully understood our inherited vernacular tradition and, together with his own modern architectural influences, reinterpreted it by reducing it to its purest qualities – context, technology and symbol. The simplicity of Gawie’s spatial arrangements, their connection to place, the honesty of the materials, and the craft in joining them resulted in an iconic body of work. Each project was different from the next, growing from the site instead of being imposed on it.

His work was not about novelty, but about authentic problem-solving – purpose over style; intention over image. As I pored over the photos I took that day, I came to realise that Gawie’s work was radical. Quiet, but radical – an oxymoron to me at the time. For the architect, tradition should not be a totem to be preserved, but a disciplined way of thinking – an instrument for invention grounded in inherited wisdom. Old lessons can be used to tell radical new stories.

Gawie Fagan’s influence on our work is not in replication, but in approach. We take lessons from the context before and above anything else. We listen before we speak. Our current work explores radical contextual reinterpretations, and we are proud to say that you cannot put two of our projects alongside one another and say, “That’s the same architect.” It shows that we are, in fact, listening. We have the radical part down – now we’re working on the quiet part… @_jankel | @_nieuw

Read the feature on Atlantic 91 designed by Jankel Nieuwoudt.

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WORDS Johan Wentzel and Grete Van As PHOTOS Hisao Suzuki, Gergori Cive, Supplied

In April 2000, while working for a large commercial architecture firm in London (and before the availability of social media or online design platforms), we saw an article in Wallpaper magazine featuring Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza’s De Blas House near Madrid. Although the text was concise, the concept of “the constructed idea” forever changed our approach to design and architecture. It’s a philosophy that allows for the creation of iconic buildings, which are both fundamentally rational and deeply connected to their surroundings.

Architects tend to reveal the keys to architecture in their drawings, their philosophies, their fl oor plans – and also in their writing. In his book The Built Idea, Campo Baeza conveys his deeply held ideas and convictions. “The reasoning on which one bases one’s work in their attempt at architecture is what is going to be reflected consciously or unconsciously,” he says. “Realising the ideas expressed in words in built works is the best proof that the ideas are valid, and the words true.”

The theory: idea, light and gravity

“The history of architecture, far from being a history of forms only, is basically a history of built ideas,” says Campo Baeza. “Forms are destroyed over time, but ideas remain and are eternal.” The sketches and ideas for De Blas House illustrate Campo Baeza’s elemental principle of Stereotomic + Tectonic = Architecture – an understanding that part of the building wishes to belong to the earth (stereotomic), and that part also separates itself from the earth (tectonic). It recognises that the entire building works in continuity with the earth, establishing minimal contact with it, and therefore helping in the production of a new architectural organism.

• STEP 1 A mountain and a tree – the natural surroundings, the context.
• STEP 2 Establishing a platform – a base.
• STEP 3 Carving a space into the platform – the stereotomic, the earth, the solids, the gravity.
• STEP 4 Providing cover or enclosure to protect from the elements. This is the tectonic – the built form, the voids, shaped and defined by light.

Campo Baeza’s architecture is characterised by precise geometry, horizontal planes, and a focus on the relationship between structure and form. His work seeks to create spaces that evoke emotion and a connection with nature, while also maintaining a rational, logical order.

The idea is the synthesis of all the elements that make up architecture – context, function, construction and composition. It’s imagined as an operation of alchemy – a distillation of elements to achieve a unique and unitary result. This result means that the idea is capable of being built, of materialising.

Just as forms pass and are destroyed, ideas remain. They are indestructible. The history of architecture, therefore, is a history of ideas – of constructed ideas, of forms that materialise and set up these ideas. Without ideas, forms are empty. Without ideas, architecture is “void”. It would be pure empty form.

Light is an essential component, indispensable in the construction of architecture. Light is “material” and, like stone, it is quantifiable and qualifiable. It is controllable and capable of being measured. Without light, there can be no architecture. We would only have dead constructions. Light is the only one capable of tensing the space for occupants. To put a person in relation to the space created for them tightens it. It makes it visible.

Without gravity, architecture – whose history is a struggle to direct gravity, to dominate it, and to overcome it – would disappear. It would atomise. Without gravity, there is no possible architecture, because its necessary materiality would disappear. Gravity builds space.

The heavy material “elements”, which make the forms that make up space real, must end up transmitting gravity – the weight of their materiality – to the earth. The gravitational support system – the structure – is what orders space, what builds it. The resulting essential space is made up of only the indispensable number of elements capable of accurately translating an idea.

Architecture based on this approach, whose materiality is a constructed idea, whose time is constructed by light, and whose space is constructed by gravity, is the architecture we call essential. Light is capable of defeating gravity. The passage of time strips architecture of the superficial so that only the essential remains.

Time, built by light, slowly and patiently makes the superficial elements that so often adorn the flirtatious architecture disappear. Time, like a doctor seeking to bring it back to life, strips it to its bare essentials. Architecture is left with only its essential attributes. Dimension, scale and proportion give life to the material that carries within it the invisible tension of gravity. And all of this is touched by the light, which, as the builder of time, produces the visible tension that makes man mute.

The practice

The resulting structure – De Blas House – realised the exact idea. It is honest and direct; it is architecture not burdened with wanting to “look good”, but that instead employs all its energy to rather “be good” (and, as a secondary result, often also looks good).

This honesty reminds us of a famous quote from Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead, and the philosophy of absolutism: “A building has integrity, just as a man and just as seldom. It must be true to its own idea, have its own form, and serve its own purpose.”

W Design’s interpretations

HOUSE #1: “UNFOLDING THE LAND”

Idea “Unfolding the Land”.

Gravity The natural Dullstroom mountain landscape – the stereotomic. Solid bedroom structures, above-ground and earth-covered, are shaped by the native stone scattered in the landscape.

Light The “liberated” barn structure – the tectonic. The open living room functions are fully focused on the extended landscape.

HOUSE #2: “BETWEEN A ROCK AND AN OPEN PLACE

Idea “Between a Rock and an Open Place”.

Gravity The natural Bronberg mountain landscape – the stereotomic. The solid structures are carved into the hillside, providing the “perch” for all living spaces.

Light The open living spaces of the home, part building, part landscape – the tectonic – are balanced inside the space between the rocky mountain landscape and the infinite.

HOUSE #3: “GRAVITY AND LIGHT”

Idea “Gravity and Light”.

Gravity The old structure, the history – the stereotomic. The solid structures, represented by the 1910 Cape Dutch gables, are “cut open” to “liberate” the living spaces.

Light The new open living spaces of the home, the voids – the tectonic. Spaces are defined by the relationship between the history and the contemporary. It’s at once completely familiar – and completely new. | wdas.co.za

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WORDS Annemie van den Heever PHOTOS Joseph W Molitor, Honeyman Films  

Leaving the familiar landscapes of my home in Tzaneen for the rigours of architectural studies, I arrived with a fresh perspective, knowing little of the discipline. My introduction came through a gift: a book called Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses by Christopher Domin. It was given to me by a senior architecture student who recognised a spatial sensibility in my early designs that reminded him of Paul Rudolph’s work. To this day, this book remains my starting point when working on a new design, with the Milam Residence in particular being a foundational study in layered facades and dynamic volumes. 

From an early internship in 1941 to his partnership with Ralph Twitchell ending in 1951, Paul Rudolph’s career began amid a pivotal transition in architecture: a move away from the universalising tendencies of orthodox Modernism towards a more regionally responsive approach. Their practice explored the intersection of modern technology and spatial theories with indigenous materials and a keen awareness of a building’s relationship to its landscape. While Twitchell’s expertise lay in practical aspects of construction, materials and detail, Rudolph was driven by conceptual underpinnings of design. This distinction became even more pronounced aft er Rudolph separated from Twitchell and established his own firm, where his work embraced a growing simplicity, as seen in the Milam Residence. 

One thing built within another 

Rudolph spoke about the idea of “one thing built within another”, expressed in the Milam Residence. Here, he introduced a secondary facade that wraps the living spaces, creating a dynamic tension between the interior layout and the exterior envelope. This interplay, where the facade sometimes aligns and sometimes diverges from the interior organisation, yields aesthetic complexity. A similar spatial strategy is evident in the Deering Residence, where the primary living spaces are wrapped around a central porch, effectively inverting the traditional home’s configuration. 

Materiality 

The Milam Residence demonstrates a deliberate material palette: concrete block, terrazzo and cypress. Cypress, a native wood known for its resistance to decay, was critical in Florida’s humid climate. The sand-coloured concrete blocks, the building’s most prominent feature, deliberately echo the beach, blurring the transition between the building and its environment. This integration is enhanced by terrazzo floors, their colour selected to replicate the coastal sands, creating a seamless visual flow from interior to exterior.

The house of seven levels 

The Milam Residence exemplifies Rudolph’s mastery of spatial modulation, a technique that’s used to tailor the mood of each space to its function. This manifests in a series of floor level variations throughout the interior – most notably the sunken living room, which creates an intimate and conversational space. This is complemented by a deliberate manipulation of ceiling heights, an architectural strategy that enhances human comfort.

Landscape connection 

The spatial complexity is enhanced by the building’s integration with its natural surroundings courtesy of the large windows. The extensive application of glass – a revolutionary feature for its time – is another defining element. After visiting Rudolph and Twitchell’s glass-walled homes, Electus D Litchfield expressed concerns about privacy in a 1948 letter to The Architectural Forum: 

“How comfortable is it to realise that the casual passer-by, unbeknownst to you, may have you in complete surveillance; and will one always recognise the necessity for pulling the curtains or lowering the Venetian blinds when one starts to disrobe – or have we reached a time of Eden-like frankness and simplicity when this is no longer necessary. 

“Again with all the beauty of the sea and the more intimate interest of the garden made part of the very furnishing of one’s room, is it possible to be surfeited with, or to become blind to, these beauties, and to find life of less consuming interest because of having all of one’s good things at once…” 

However, time has proven the lasting appeal of expansive views, demonstrating the value of “having all of one’s good things at once”. These design elements – now commonplace in contemporary architecture – were revolutionary at the time. Delving into their origins provides a deeper understanding of their enduring necessity and, crucially, how to effectively implement them.

Rudolph’s influence on us

When it comes to our own work, Rudolph’s influence is evident in the way we approach spatial complexity. The “one thing built within another” principle guides our resolution of challenging designs. We’ve found that creating spaces with the right ambiance doesn’t always translate to a cohesive facade. To address this, we often employ a secondary facade, providing a layer of order and visual interest. 

For instance, our Clarens penthouse showcases a concrete frame that envelops a loosely defined interior. At the White House, cantilevered concrete beams join up to delineate an outdoor kitchen, preventing it from becoming lost within an expansive deck. 

Furthermore, our studio’s focus on urban environments has heightened our awareness of the balance between privacy and connection to the surroundings. Studying this era also emphasises the importance of careful window placement. In addition to being a budgetary waste, indiscriminately placed windows can be a source of significant discomfort. 

At another one of our projects, The Aven, a strategically positioned window provides a private bathing experience, seamlessly integrating the iconic Lion’s Head into the interior space. Even in the remote setting of the White House, windows are meticulously placed to frame specific elements of the surrounding landscape. 

Ultimately, Rudolph’s work has instilled in us a profound appreciation for the power of architectural ideas to shape our experience of the world. | hoursclear.com

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Kate Otten, the founding architect of Kate Otten Architects, talks about the Houghton Jumu’ah Mosque by Muhammad Mayet Architects + Urban Designers and Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil.

WORDS Kate Otten PHOTOS SUPPLIED

My studies of Architecture started at the then-University of Natal, Durban in 1982. While there may have been a few people of colour in my class, and several women, the history and theory of architecture were clearly taught from a white, male, Western standpoint and recording. I wanted to learn about African architecture and culture; about sun-baked mud-brick structures and carefully handcrafted details.

Physical library searches – how we did things before the internet! – offered little information on African architecture in general, but they did bring me to beautifully illustrated and well-documented books on Islamic architecture. And so began my research into this rich alternative offering. Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy soon became my idol.

I pored over whatever drawings, photographs and writings of his I could find, marvelling at the subtle twist and careful resolution of geometries that facing the qibla (the direction of the Kaaba at the Sacred Mosque in Mecca) creates; loving how, by building flat parabolic arches, he built vaults and domes with no shuttering, and how the colour of the earth bricks melted into the desert, defined only by a play of light and shadow.

To my delight, for my practical year out of university in 1985, I was offered a position at the office of Muhammad Mayet Architects. I fell in love with architecture. Among the many wonderful experiences I had during this time, three stand out: the incredible full-colour tomes on the architecture of Morocco that Mayet had in his office; my involvement with the making of mud-brick mosques in Malawi; and my introduction to the work of another Egyptian architect, Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil.

El-Wakil, it seemed, had had the same problem as I did – frustration at being taught only about Western architecture until he learnt about Hassan Fathy. So Fathy mentored El-Wakil who mentored Mayet who mentored Otten… Imagine my joy when, some years later, I finally saw Fathy’s village of New Gourna, in the flesh, while travelling in Egypt.

From the highway, I have watched the Jumu’ah Mosque slowly emerge, only to stop for a period before being completed in 2013. Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting the Houghton mosque with Mayet. We arrived at 9am on a Wednesday, the timing and my headscarf specific so that I could gain access to an empty main (male) prayer space. The space is beautiful, with a crescendo of what I would describe as “Hassan Fathy vaults” (or catenary vaults that follow an inverted catenary or parabolic curve), which increase in size towards a dome above where the imam stands, and where you find the mihrab or niche that shows the direction of prayer.

Not Many People Know That…

The entire building, including the vaults, is made of structural brickwork, then plastered and painted white. The structure is also passively ventilated – meaning that there is no mechanical air conditioning. Cool air is drawn into a void below the building, and then drawn into the building itself through the large, hollow brick columns. From there, it gently trickles through patterned vents into the prayer hall.

Soft natural light filters from high-level arched windows. Like so many other details within the mosque complex, the vents and window grilles are carefully crafted, with much of the work – especially the timber carving – made by hand. El-Wakil speaks of craft as a way of “supporting your identity”. This is evident again in the intricately patterned and carved timber minbar (pulpit) where the imam stands to deliver the sermon. In keeping with Islamic tradition, the women’s section is upstairs, separate but also part of the main prayer space, screened by equally beautifully carved timber mashrabiyya screens. The common features of a mosque are here: the courtyard, the main prayer space, the minaret or tower, the water feature symbolic of the four rivers of Paradise (sadly now filled with plants due to maintenance constraints).

Mayet explains that Islamic architecture is not about style, but about tradition and a collective identity. As an architect, you learn the tradition and the way of making architecture, of placing volume in space. It is always the same, but varies according to context, climate, available materials and available skills. Architecture changes with the environment, not with the time. Perhaps this explains why the Houghton Jumu’ah Mosque is, for me, at once familiar and yet completely new and exciting; I recognise the tradition of mosque design, but here, it lives within a landscape not usually occupied by Islamic architecture.

I Love How…

The mosque sits in Johannesburg’s manufactured wooded landscape, the purity of its white undulating form with tall minarets nestled in the green foliage of the suburbs. I love too how the large white form catches your eye as you speed by on the highway, the minarets marking the place from afar. It has a presence in the landscape, but does not intimidate the user. Fathy speaks of beauty as a human right, which he believes comes automatically if you, as an architect, take care of the “human reference, spirituality and harmonics”. Being in this space assures you that these factors have been well taken care of.

Why The Building Matters

The Muslim community in the area use the mosque every day – but it also matters for how it occupies its place in a new South Africa. It could not have been here generations before as Houghton was, thanks to apartheid and the Group Areas Act, a whites-only suburb. Unfortunately, a vestige of this past still remains – part of the consent agreement allowing the mosque to be built in Houghton was that the call to prayer would not be sounded across the area. How sad, I think, not to hear the haunting sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer – a sound that conjures such a rich aural sense of community. I am told, however, that thanks to the internet, you can now receive the call directly to your house.

The State of Play Today

Is that of a well-used, busy mosque – especially during the holy month of Ramadan. | kateottenarchitects.com

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WORDS Kevin Fellingham PHOTOS Supplied

I would like to talk about a pair of Joburg buildings designed by Norman Hanson – one since demolished, the other altered beyond recognition. Both continue to exist as ideas recorded in drawings and memories, and captured in photographs. Had they been built today, they might appear unexceptional – but if we look at the photographs, the cars, the neighbours, the clothing and the horse-drawn cart, we can try to imagine just how strange they must have seemed almost 90 years ago. We still think of buildings like this as “modern”.

While the language of modern architecture has been shared among many architects, Hanson spoke it in his own way. It is the plans for his buildings that are extraordinary, with oblique and curved elements set in tension with a gridded rectangular order. Architects read plans in the same way as authors read books; and just as the novelist Cormac McCarthy confessed that all books are made from other books, architects will admit that all plans are made from other plans. We read into them not just the shapes of buildings, but the lives that have been, or will be, lived within them by people who will never be aware of the drawings that give rise to so much of their daily experience.

We experience the secret language of plans when we visit a building. We are led from one space to another by the gestures of walls, drawn to the doors and windows, guided through an organised sequence of visual and physical experiences of space, light and materiality. Le Corbusier coined the term “promenade architecturale” for this invention, inspired by the idea of a camera moving through a scene as a protagonist in the story.

At Hanson’s own home, the promenade begins when leaving the car, and moves around the corner of the cubic mass of the living room, past the giant window, under the oversailing mass of the bedrooms, towards a sunny inset courtyard, diagonally across a paved hallway, up a tall half-spiralling stairway, climbing towards the light, through a small door in a blank wall that delivers one to a brightly lit studio, which shares its smooth ceiling and giant window (the one passed upon entry) with the living room below, and down a nautical stair to that window, looking north across the suburban garden. Le Corbusier called the plan the generator – of form, and of experience in use. It is this way of thinking that was explained to me through the work of Hanson by the magician Pancho Guedes, and which led to me following a dual career as a designer of forward-looking buildings, and a historian and scholar of modern architecture.

As an architect, I know that every project is part of a family of other projects with which it likely shares DNA. Denstone Court would have been on the drawing boards at the same time as House Hanson. It was in the inner city, demolished to make space for the Carlton Centre. At the time of the design, Hanson was a bachelor, and it was as a home for bachelors that it was imagined. At the ground level was a car park – unheard of at the time – a filling station to fuel the cars, and a restaurant to feed the inhabitants. Like his own house, the route from the car – or the street – was choreographed to make returning home a delight; and like his home, the sequence ended with a view. In this case, the view was down Eloff Street, from a balcony approached by a nautical stair, and cantilevered out over the street like a ship’s bridge.

At his house, part of the building floated above the garden on cylindrical concrete columns, providing an outdoor living room of the type we still aspire to. In the city, the residents’ garden floated above the cityscape on a roof terrace. At ground level, the columns of the collective house were not cylindrical but curvaceous strong, shapely legs hoisting the whole building into the air. Columns very much like these appeared after the war in Le Corbusier’s famous Unite d’Habitation in Marseille, along with that oversailing balcony and the sloping parapet playing with perspective when seen from ground level.

We can’t know for sure if the master was influenced by the acolyte, but we do know that Rex Martienssen, Hanson’s closest co-conspirator in bringing the future to South Africa, took the drawings with him to Paris in 1938, to show to “Corbu”. All buildings are made from other buildings.

Hanson was later to turn away from the lyrical work of his youth to a technically more resolved and aesthetically more conservative social realism. The weightless abstraction implied by the so-called international style proved difficult to translate into durable buildings, the invisibility of details having been understood as a lack thereof. Even so, Hanson remains one of South Africa’s finest architects, setting the challenge for later generations to find a way of making buildings that are well crafted, responsive to the needs and desires of individuals and the wider society, and, most importantly, that bring pleasure to those who experience and use them. Like many of the progressive architects of his generation, he was obliged to leave the country of his birth to avoid the prying eyes of the state security apparatus.

His work reminds architects to look at the plan not as a result of a series of images, but as the core of our craft. It reminds us that architecture can be beautiful while being simple – or even, rather, humble. | @kevinfellinghamarchitects

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Through our unique Building an Icon series we celebrate classic South African buildings by exploring their rich (and sometimes controversial) histories. This year a handful of South Africa’s top architects talked to us about the local architectural landmarks they find fascinating.

Netherlands Bank

by Joshua Montile

Tucked away in the heart of the Durban CBD, a stone’s throw from City Hall and dwarfed by its imposing neighbours, rests an architectural masterpiece by one of South Africa’s most celebrated and revered architects. I first stumbled across the Netherlands Bank building as an architecture student in my second year of studies (the true puberty phase of architectural education). “Stumbled” is the correct word, as the four-storey building is easily lost among its soaring Smith Street surroundings. I stood across the street, watching people steal a moment from the hustle and bustle, at peace among the trees and bubbling fountains around its base. That moment left an indelible impression, and as I learnt more about the building and its legendary designer Norman Eaton, my fascination only grew.

Read the full story on the Netherlands Bank.

Johannesburg Gas Works

by Judith Muindisi and Monika Läuferta le Roux

Like so many derelict industrial sites, the Johannesburg Gas Works buildings have outlived the purpose for which they were constructed. The Gas Works was conceived and designed to meet the ever-growing energy demands of Johannesburg. The site plan of 1927 shows the original plant consisting of 20 buildings, but not all were constructed at that time because of the Great Depression, which hit in 1929. Retorts 1 and 2 are regarded as the most important historical buildings in the complex. These housed the machinery that processed coal into a gas form, which would later be purified, cooled, stored and distributed to consumers. In addition to the technical and functional use of the retorts, the very design of the buildings, and their execution – like the design and execution of so many industrial buildings of that era – show the excellence of craftsmanship of the time.

Read the full story on the Johannesburg Gas Works.

Dombeya

by Gillian Holl

Veld Architects’ Gillian Holl was recently introduced to the architectural wonders of Dombeya, built by artist Alexis Preller, when she was called on by its new owners to help restore some of the buildings. In this instalment of our popular series that celebrates landmark local buildings, she takes us through the story of the almost-mythical complex – and the two men who conjured it.

Read the full story on Dombeya.

The Ansteys Building

by Brian McKechnie

Last night, I dreamt of downtown Johannesburg. The dream stretched out across acres of grey, a mirage of thousands of square concrete paving blocks – crooked, marked with pieces of chewing gum and mottled by tens of thousands of footprints. Frantic blurs of colour enveloped me – trousers, skirts, shoes, shopping bags, all offset against the concrete. The pavers began to chart a meticulously scaled map of the city centre.

An enormous living page of graph paper, anchoring urban intersections, movement and latent possibility. The dream felt like late afternoon; the sun’s rays hung long and low, heavy with that particular Highveld luminosity. I close my eyes again; the image ascends above the street and the city haze calms. A lone edifice emerges, suspended above the fever, ethereal. Ansteys.

Read the full story on the Ansteys building.

Rowan Lane Houses

by Bettina Woodward

Almost eight years ago, I booked an appointment with an estate agent to view No. 5 Rowan Lane, pretending to be an interested buyer. In reality, I was just an interested architect – word had spread in the industry that “that house” was for sale. We had just finished renovating a Victorian in Tamboerskloof, and I certainly wasn’t in the market for a new house. However, the moment I stepped inside, I knew I had stumbled upon something special. I called my husband in tears and told him to come over right away. In about five minutes we decided that we would move the family to Kenilworth.

Read the full story on the Rowan Lane Houses.

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As part of our ongoing series, principal architect at Open City, Bettina Woodward, talks to us about the Rowan Lane Houses – one of which she’s fortunate enough to call home.

Almost eight years ago, I booked an appointment with an estate agent to view No. 5 Rowan Lane, pretending to be an interested buyer. In reality, I was just an interested architect – word had spread in the industry that “that house” was for sale. We had just finished renovating a Victorian in Tamboerskloof, and I certainly wasn’t in the market for a new house. However, the moment I stepped inside, I knew I had stumbled upon something special.

I called my husband in tears and told him to come over right away. In about five minutes we decided that we would move the family to Kenilworth.

THE CONTEXT

Antonio de Souza Santos and Adèle Naudé Santos are the creative minds behind some of Cape Town’s most admired houses and multi-storey residential buildings of the late 1960s and early ’70s (like this Kenilworth home). Adèle and Tony (as they were known) formed a powerful duo in architecture and, even though they left for the US after only practising in South Africa for five years, many architects believe their work in Cape Town is the highlight of both their careers, and that their collaboration had a unique brilliance. Their impact can be seen today in the sculptural apartment blocks by Robert Silke & Partners currently going up in Sea Point.

Adèle was born into an influential Afrikaans family; her father was a well-known architect responsible for large projects, including the Brutalist Cape Town Civic Centre. Her grandfather was the painter Hugo Naudé. She completed her studies at the Architectural Association in London. Tony was born in Mozambique and studied at UCT, then at the University of Pennsylvania, before returning to Cape Town.

THE ZEITGEIST

In South Africa in the late ’60s, the architectural spirit was shaped by Modernist and Brutalist influences, emphasising simplicity, functionality and the use of durable materials such as concrete. And while apartheid’s socio-political climate-dictated urban planning and architecture promoted segregation, some architects subtly resisted through inclusive designs. Among them were Adèle and Tony, who blended international Modernist trends with a unique South African identity, creating contextually relevant and humane architectural works.

Fellow architect Roelof Uytenbogaardt’s work was also significant at this time, with its emphasis on public spaces and community-centred design often challenging the urban layouts of apartheid, but also introducing a unique sculptural quality. His controversial Werdmuller Centre was developed concurrently with the Rowan Lane houses – and Adèle and Tony both worked with Uytenbogaardt, as well as taught alongside him at UCT.

NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW THAT…

Despite the buildings’ contemporary appearance, the Rowan Lane houses are part of a family of buildings that can trace their heritage to legendary Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier’s designs penned nearly 100 years ago. Like Le Corbusier’s Curutchet House (1953) in Argentina and Villa Savoye (1931) in France, the Rowan Lane buildings contain many of the same elements: pilotis (pillars/columns), a free-flowing plan, roof gardens and ramps. But the Santoses went beyond mere imitation – they pioneered new spatial sequences that are more flexible, contextually responsive and sculptural. It’s an approach that’s likely the result of being mentored by Pancho Guedes and Aldo van Eyck, both members of the influential “Team X” group of architects who championed Structuralism, Brutalism and related urban planning in the ’60s and ’70s.

It’s one of the reasons the Rowan Lane houses are often considered Adèle and Tony’s best work in South Africa. Leading international architectural historian Kenneth Frampton has been attributed as describing the houses as “the best late modern houses I have ever (not) seen”.

The design consists of five adjoining compact row houses, each uniquely responding to the topography and vegetation of its site. The significance of the Rowan Lane buildings lies not only in the architectural merit of each but also in their relationship to one another. In a recent interview, Adèle said, “I have never dropped the idea that building and landscape had a wonderful reciprocity.” From the street, the five houses appear as an ensemble of white masses, stepping up and down, with a few curves thrown in. The roofs were planted (possibly a Cape Town first), and existing mature trees were retained to allow the client to look over the five houses she built for her children without spoiling the view. The roofs were originally planted with kikuyu lawns, but their invasive roots soon destroyed the waterproofing. Today, three out of five owners have reinstated the green roofs, this time opting for fynbos.

I LOVE THEM BECAUSE…

The design embodies Aldo van Eyck’s metaphor: “Tree is leaf and leaf is tree – house is city and city is house – a tree is a tree but is also a huge leaf – a leaf is a leaf but is also a tiny tree – a city is not a city unless it is also a huge house – a house is a house only if it is also a tiny city.” Each house is made of the same kit of parts, assembled slightly differently depending on site conditions – and when analysed geometrically, it becomes clear that they were working with strict proportioning systems. There’s a mathematical rhythm running through the entire design.

THE STATE OF PLAY TODAY

Many of the mature trees around which the houses were designed remain today, including the beautiful magnolia at the entrance to No. 2. The lane is a neighbourhood favourite, attracting nannies with toddlers from the surrounding area to ride bikes, play ball and hang out. There is something powerful about placing the front door of each house right on the street – a stark contrast to the usually paranoid South African context, where the desire is often for separation.

Living in No. 5 has been an extraordinary privilege for our family. I find myself marvelling at the beauty and tranquillity of the spaces, and the way the house flows seamlessly between the inside and outside. When I asked my eight- year-old daughter what she loved most about our home, she said it was like “taking a walk in nature”.

The unique geometry of the site and the five pre-existing maple trees led the architects to create a rhythmic, curved, glazed courtyard. In a masterful move, the house turns back on itself where the ramped staircase almost touches

the corner of the bedroom wing. Every room is visually connected to the garden. The emphasis on the human experience, designed from the inside out to facilitate life in such a delightful way, is a feat that very few architects can match, even 50 years later. In Adele’s words, “I never start from the outside inwards. I always start from the experience of people. The light, the views, the form of space itself… Starting with the notion of the human experience. Through the process of making life within whatever structure you’re creating, that’s where the poetry comes.”

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARCHITECTS?

Both went on to have illustrious careers in the US. Adèle became the dean of architecture and planning at MIT, while Antonio became a professor of architecture, and founding director of the interdisciplinary Master of Infrastructure Planning programme at the New Jersey School of Architecture. Both also continued to practise architecture, making significant contributions to architectural education and research. santosprescott.com | opencity.co.za

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Join architect Brian McKechnie on a journey through 1930s Johannesburg as we continue our series on South Africa’s most iconic buildings. This time we visit an Art Deco jewel – the Ansteys Building.

Last night, I dreamt of downtown Johannesburg. The dream stretched out across acres of grey, a mirage of thousands of square concrete paving blocks – crooked, marked with pieces of chewing gum and mottled by tens of thousands of footprints. Frantic blurs of colour enveloped me – trousers, skirts, shoes, shopping bags, all offset against the concrete. The pavers began to chart a meticulously scaled map of the city centre.

An enormous living page of graph paper, anchoring urban intersections, movement and latent possibility. The dream felt like late afternoon; the sun’s rays hung long and low, heavy with that particular Highveld luminosity. I close my eyes again; the image ascends above the street and the city haze calms. A lone edifice emerges, suspended above the fever, ethereal. Ansteys.

The basics

Ansteys is located at the corner of Rahima Moosa (formerly Jeppe) and Joubert Street in downtown Joburg. The 1936 design was penned by Emley and Williamson Architects as the flagship location for the famous Norman Anstey and Company department store. The skyscraper sits atop an elegantly curved podium, clad in green terrazzo with ribbon window bands. Two ziggurat- shaped towers rise above the base, with cylindrical glazed windows at their intersection. The towers – topped by a dramatic Art Deco flag mast – accommodated offices for the store, as well as lavish penthouses on the top levels.

Not many people know that…

At a time when Johannesburg was obsessed with being the most modern, up-to-date and luxurious city, Ansteys was the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere. Playwright, activist and secret uMkhonto we Sizwe member Cecil Williams kept a penthouse on the 16th floor. When Nelson Mandela was captured by apartheid police in Howick in August 1962, he was travelling the country posing as Williams’s driver.

At its zenith

The department store was famed for its artful window displays, carefully curated behind plate glass-and-chrome shopfronts, which were curved to avoid reflections from car headlights. Evening strollers could marvel at the latest fashions from Paris and London after dining at the Carlton or an evening of theatre at His Majesty’s. The fourth floor housed a tea terrace, where waiters in tan suits and red sashes attended white-gloved ladies, while models – known as “mannequins” – discreetly presented the threads on sale in the store below. The building’s careful design provided upper-floor residences with ample sunlight, views and airy, spacious interiors. Select penthouses included floor-to-ceiling bay windows and linear balconies, opening out to sweeping vistas across the city, past golden mine dumps to distant rocky ridges.

The state of play today

The decline of high-street shopping and exodus of capital from the city centre left Ansteys with an uncertain future. After a failed bid for demolition, the building was donated to the National Monuments Council, and sectionalised in 1994, providing the first affordable inner-city housing in Joburg. At the close of the 20th century, it again became a pioneering development – no longer the tallest or most luxurious in Africa, but rather a place where people of all races and different incomes could own a home in a much-loved heritage monument in the heart of the city. Today, the building accommodates a diverse array of residents, from professionals to clothing designers, artists and ordinary inner-city families.

Why the building matters

Almost 90 years after its opening, Ansteys remains a design icon. Its resilience is testament to the enduring quality of good design.

We love it because…

Ansteys is one of South Africa’s most recognisable Art Deco structures – a steadfast anchor and an enduring monument to the faded glamour of the once Golden City.

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Veld Architects’ Gillian Holl was recently introduced to the architectural wonders of Dombeya, built by artist Alexis Preller, when she was called on by its new owners to help restore some of the buildings. In this instalment of our popular series that celebrates landmark local buildings, she takes us through the story of the almost-mythical complex – and the two men who conjured it.

The Basics

Over the 20 or so years that the visionary 20th century artistic icon Alexis Preller lived at Dombeya, his smallholding near Brits, he almost always had a new building project on the go. From the mid-1950s onwards, Preller constructed a complex of buildings that in the end included his house and studio, a guesthouse, a swimming pool and changing room, and his swan song – a remarkable gallery/museum space known as the Mudhif.

A vaulted brick building inspired by the giant arched grass structures made by the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, the Mudhif was a tribute to Preller’s devoted friend, the architect Norman Eaton, who died in 1966 after a car accident, and left much of his collection of art and artefacts to Preller. The Mudhif was intended to house Eaton’s collection.

Eaton and Preller shared an appreciation for design from all over Africa, from local Ndebele architecture
to the art and design they encountered further afield. They travelled extensively throughout the continent, and their mutual interests and ideas found expression in both Eaton’s architecture and Preller’s art. The two men, in turn, also influenced each other.

Preller’s paintings were filled with myth, symbolism and cosmology, veering from the surreal to the abstract. Dedicated to making an art of Africa, he once said that his aim was “to identify myself with my age and place: Africa, and the 20th century”. His buildings at Dombeya were a manifestation of that artistic ambition, too.

Eaton was a similarly solitary figure. Architectural historian Clive Chipkin describes him as “a remote figure outside the hurly-burly of general practice”. Preller described his work as having “an African quality”, which is now understood as a rare, pioneering example of a uniquely African language of “regional Modernism”. His use of carvings, mosaics and intricate brick patterning blurred the distinction between architecture and decoration.

At its Zenith

After buying an empty expanse of subdivided farmland with views of the Magaliesberg, Preller started building at Dombeya in October 1956. “With some advice from Norman Eaton, he designed a very basic house: a large single room for living, working, eating and sleeping, with glass doors on the south side looking out on the Dombeya tree,” writes Esmé Berman, coauthor of Alexis Preller: A Visual Biography. A few years later, when he received the commission to paint a mural for the Transvaal Provincial Administration building in Pretoria, Preller had to build a new studio big enough to house the canvasses.

In 1966, he began planning architectural additions again, including a guesthouse. This time, he took inspiration from Eaton’s creative use of brickwork. The new guest suite not only features one of those amazing mosaic floors, but also a mural by Erich Frey (who was actually a jeweller) made with rectangular copper sheets designed to catch the light – sunlight by day, candlelight by night. In 1970, Preller added a swimming pool and the conical changing-room tower (which looked a lot like the structures he’d been painting for years). Eventually, in 1974, he began building the Mudhif, the museum/gallery he had envisioned to house the Eaton collection, and which would incorporate a pair of carved wooden doors that Eaton had brought back from Zanzibar. The building was never finished, although its shell and another staggering mosaic floor were completed.

In December 1975, Preller went into hospital for an operation, where he unfortunately passed away. He was buried at Dombeya alongside his partner, Guna Massyn. The property was sold in 1977.

The State of Play Today

Dombeya’s new owners are in discussion with Veld Architects about the restoration of the remaining buildings in the complex. Some have been altered beyond recognition, but the guesthouse, the studio and the Mudhif – including the magnificent floors – are intact. Even the changing room next to the swimming pool is still standing.

Why the Building Matters

Its place in local art and architectural history alone makes it significant. The stories that swirl around this place are still told and retold in art auction catalogues whenever important Preller works appear for sale. Eaton’s legacy is much better appreciated now, and questions about climate, landscape, materials, culture and identity that he began exploring all those years ago are front of mind for architects once again. As the epicentre of Preller and Eaton’s intellectual and artistic collaborations, Dombeya embodies a unique intersection between African identity and modernity.

Not Many People Know that…

The Zanzibar doors originally intended for the Mudhif now belong to another artist and academic (and notable Preller expert), Professor Karel Nel. After Preller’s and Massyn’s deaths, the doors were auctioned off. Years later, Nel went to great lengths to track them down, and had them incorporated into his own Dombeya-inspired, barrel-vaulted house and studio – which he named Mudhif.

We Love it Because

In Preller’s foreword to Norman Eaton: Architect, he concluded: “With him, magic and reality and truth were absolutes; interchangeable, and, very often, one.” He could be describing Dombeya. The incredible decorative details – the floors and murals! – are an integral part of an overarching vision here, not an add-on. Craft, construction and architecture are one. To have the opportunity to restore it and bring it back to its former glory is beyond exciting.

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In this instalment of our popular series that celebrates landmark local buildings, heritage specialists Judith Muindisi and Monika Läuferta le Roux explore the tumbledown beauty of the Johannesburg Gas Works.

The Basics

Like so many derelict industrial sites, the Johannesburg Gas Works buildings have outlived the purpose for which they were constructed. The Gas Works was conceived and designed to meet the ever-growing energy demands of Johannesburg. The site plan of 1927 shows the original plant consisting of 20 buildings, but not all were constructed at that time because of the Great Depression, which hit in 1929. Retorts 1 and 2 are regarded as the most important historical buildings in the complex. These housed the machinery that processed coal into a gas form, which would later be purified, cooled, stored and distributed to consumers. In addition to the technical and functional use of the retorts, the very design of the buildings, and their execution – like the design and execution of so many industrial buildings of that era – show the excellence of craftsmanship of the time.

Almost a hundred years on, the retorts are now majestic and cathedral-like. Broken windows, rusted steel, cobwebs and plants growing from cracks give them a haunted look that is otherworldly, and nearly impossible to forget once experienced. The exterior showcases the prominent use of red brick, symmetrical projections and notable Art Deco elements. The extension of the campus in 1935-1936, as well as in the 1950s, saw a continuation of the architectural style which, today, gives the site its character.

At Its Zenith

The Gas Works site reached its peak in the 1940s and ’50s. During that time, it became quite fashionable for households to upgrade their coal and wood stoves and connect to the city’s gas supply. When gas production began in 1928, statistics estimated that there were 1 265 consumers of gas in Johannesburg. By 1949, there were as many as 15 000. While domestic use far outnumbered industrial use, 300 industries were also dependent on gas for the bulk of their power. To accommodate the expansion, several new buildings were erected, including a second retort. The importance of the site at that time cannot be overstated – it was seen as a reliable and affordable source of energy (an ironically topical subject today) needed for Joburg’s expansion.

Not Many People Know That…

The Gas Works’ importance was not lost on the African National Congress (ANC) – in the early 1980s, in a bid to sabotage strategic operations and bring the apartheid government to its knees, the Gas Works was within the ANC’s sights. On 13 November 1983, The New York Times carried an article of an alleged “treasonous” plot to bomb the Johannesburg Gas Works as an act of resistance against the government.

Two students (and active members of the ANC), Carl Niehaus and his fiancée Johanna Lourens, were brought before the Rand Supreme Court that month to answer to the charges. Carl confessed, and was found guilty of obtaining plans and photographs of the Johannesburg Gas Works, for the purpose of bombing the complex and sabotaging operations. The photographs, as well as hand- drawn plans of the Gas Works, were to be taken by courier to neighbouring Botswana for final planning approval, but Carl was arrested before this could happen. He escaped the death sentence, but was sentenced to 15 years in jail. His fiancée was sentenced to four years in jail for not reporting his activities. Carl served half of his sentence; he was released in 1991 along with other political prisoners. He remained a senior ANC member, serving in government from 1994 until his expulsion from the ruling party in 2022.

Why The Building Matters

Looking at it, it’s clear that the Gas Works has architectural and aesthetic significance. This is rare in Joburg – so many old buildings have been replaced by shiny new ones. It is also one of the few sites in the city that has an almost complete historical account thanks to the foresight of the late former engineer Peter Finsen, who preserved brochures and took hundreds of photographs of the site. Peter also made sure at least one set of the old machinery that made gas was preserved in Retort 1 when the operations ceased in the early 1990s.

What is most important, though, are the hundreds of stories, told and untold, held in the memory of Joburg residents, about what the Gas Works means to them. Countless people have tales of sneaking a peek at its magnificence from the adjacent Liebermann Pottery, or even of telling the time of day by looking at the site’s retractable gas tanks. Those stories are what make it dear to people’s hearts – and worth fighting for.

The State of Play Today

The delight of knowing this site still stands today in its spectral glory is often tempered by wanting to bring something new to the conversation on its sustainable development. The buildings are hauntingly beautiful in their current state, and in a way, we wish they would remain so forever. But loving the site comes with the burden of knowing that in its static, ethereal beauty lies vulnerability to development proposals, changing plans, vandalism, and the many other evils that lurk in the shadows of heritage conservation in South Africa.

We can take comfort from the knowledge that nothing is on the cards at the moment, and that it’s still a working industrial site owned by Egoli Gas, producing natural gas for thousands of Johannesburg consumers on a different section of the site. Egoli Gas has shown an interest in the original structure’s preservation, but several development proposals over the years have been turned down because of their unsuitability.

And so the Gas Works still stands – but for how long? We continue to draw from it as much as we can, and hope for it too – perhaps for it to be seen as a timeless art piece, too precious not to be part of this city’s fabric.

Judith Muindisi and Monika Läuferts le Roux are founders of Tsica Heritage Consultants, and authors of the 2015 book The Johannesburg Gas Works (Fourthwall), which includes essays by Clive Chipkin and Alexander Opper.

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