MARU a PULA

24/08/2022

Matlotlo House (Old Reserve Bank Building- ORB), Gauteng Province Department of Finance and Economic Affairs, Corner Fox and Simmonds Streets. Awarded the “Colosseum Award for Conserving Heritage in the Johannesburg Inner City Certificate of Achievement” for the Old Reserve Bank Building, renamed “Matlotlo House”.

The Old Reserve Bank (ORB) Building is a 19th Century neoclassical building.
We proposed to convert its four-storey court into an atrium by covering it with a groined-vault that marries 21st century architectural technology with 19th Century neo-classical architectural language. The former is demonstrated through the use of materials such as the 2,5 m X 2,5m wide curved and toughened glass sheets as well as the cable with spider-bracket bracing whilst the latter is demonstrated by the crossing of two vaults whose arch-geometrics and groined form are rooted in the origins of greco-roman classisim later revived during the European Renaissance. The boldness and grandeur of this groined vault is inspired by the late 20th Century spiral-ramped dome of the Reich Stach in Berlin whose materiality, design and construction methodology manifest the marrying of modern day materials with neo-classical architecture.

The ORB's glass groined vault is a transparent crown that timelessly celebrates revered colonial Architect Gordon Leith's building; a rare monument amongst the city's heritage gems. At the same time, the groined vault contributes to the city a piece of the future of architectural practice that is soon to transform Johannesburg into a 21st Century world-class African City, as it bravely changes and grows for future generations.

30/06/2022

“Kopanong Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) Precinct”, 2004. Public Sector Comparator”.

The proposal aims to democratise Joburg CBD’s colonial and apartheid space planning by reclaiming outdoor space equivalent to the lost 2 city blocks of the original Market Square to increase the footprint of Beyers Naude Square from the one and a half city block size, back to the size of 4 city blocks and widening all pavements along the CBD’s main arterial routes that gravitate from the CBD’s taxi and bus terminals towards Beyer’s Naude Square and permeate from the square throughout the fabric of the CBD.

The proposal applies culture adequate design tools and principles to integrate the CBD’s township and rural cultures and economies with the urban and suburban cultures and economies, thereby ensuring a culturally equitable mixed-use environment for both the emerging township and rural cultures and economies on the one hand with the established urban and suburban cultures and economies on the other hand.

Reclaiming the 2 city blocks means 10 buildings need to be demolished. The extensive heritage impact mitigations for the 6 over 60year old buildings, memorialise the buildings as best as possible. Particular in this regard are 2 buildings; Architect Gordon Leith’s “Rand Water Board Building” and Architect Louw and Louw’s “Volkskas Building”, which are iconic for their colonial and apartheid symbolism respectively.

The 2 buildings are memorialised as 2 subterraneous sunken-fountain museums of their own historic functions and purposes as well as the ideological histories, nestled into 2 sunken fountains; an architectural precedent to the Ground Zero Fountain in New York, having presented the design to memorialise the 2 Joburg buildings as sunken-fountain museums, to an architect colleague and friend who was part of the Ground Zero’s urban landscape design team in 2004.

The Joburg 2 heritage buildings retain the granite portions of their facades to reuse the granite portions as mono pitch roofs of the 2 sunken fountain museums. The museums are sunken to symbolise a burying of our colonial and apartheid injustices; the water fountain is metephorical for purifying and cleansing away the ideological injustices and that the 2 buildings are museums, serves to ensure the new functions and purposes of the buildings will be to maintain and not lose the memories of these ideologies, because the museums will be curated to narrate our colonial and apartheid histories.

The interior footprint of each sunken-fountain museum is equivalent to the footprint of the gradiently inclined granite facades, which are repurposed as mono-pitch roofs of the museums. The external walls under the facade-roofs are water cascading curtain walls to maximise natural light throughout the museums interiors. The opaque effect of the cascading water on the curtain wall, is a metaphor for the disfigured, distorted, obscure, non-transparent and surreal social-geographies of our colonial and apartheid eras. The emersion of the museum interiors in 360 degrees of natural light, signifies casting a light on the ideological histories so they are always in full view and never forgotten to never possibly be repeated nor realise their reverse versions.

Note the Botho/uBuntu Heritage Recreation Entertainment and Shopping Complex fronting the Nedbank Building on Sauer Street, which is animated for the GPG Precinct, with New York’s Time Square like digital billboards.

30/06/2022

“Botho/uBuntu New Heritage Recreation, Entertainment and Shopping Center” at Beyer’s Naude Square - Kopanong Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) Precinct. 2004

The “Botho/uBuntu Complex”, was part of the 2004 proposed Kopanong Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) Precinct, as the central architectural feature in what was a proposed Grand Kopanong Beyer’s Naude Square, whose footprint would be increased by the demolition of 2 city blocks as part of reclaiming the 2 city blocks, which City Hall (today the Gauteng Provincial Legislature) and later the City Library took from the historically 4 city blocks Market Square, and reduced the square to 1 and a half city blocks. This changed the name of the square from Market Square to the Library Gardens.

The reduction of the square was part of the militaristic colonial and apartheid spatial planning, which limited public space to restrict the use the square for political gatherings by then so-called non-European people. The demolition of 2 city blocks meant sacrificing 10 buildings for the democratisation of a square whose function and purpose by fronting the Provincial Legislature, is to allow the people of the province a sizable gathering space to engage their provincial government leaders for both celebratory and protest events as well as for cultural and social-economic activities.

The design concept of the building is the Tswana Homestead, borrowing the footprint of “archeological evidence of settlements similar to the Tswana”. The footprint’s circular enclosures of indoor dwellings with an outdoor “Lapa” (“Front Court”) and “Food Storage Silos” are segmented into floor levels ascending from subterraneous basement parking levels of the building, to above ground and hoisted towards the heavens by a Spiralling Colonnade, where the homestead footprint signifies indigenous settlement and the hoisting symbolises reaching towards the sanctity of the heavens to venerate Bantu cultures, sciences and technologies from their colonialist and apartheid connotations and indignations.

The combination of a historic Bantu homestead footprint with contemporary recycled building materials, speaks of the fusion of history and modernity, the transcendence of tradition into the future. The Botho/uBuntu Complex is to the square what the Glass Pyramid is in the square at the Louvre Museum in Paris, i.e. a jewel like architectural feature being the gateway between the basement parking below and the square above.

10/03/2021

North East Areal View

10/03/2021

South East

10/03/2021

01/03/2021