OH Architecture: July 2011

OH13 Max Policansky Monograph - Part 1

I’ve always been OBSESSED with the modernist factories down in Salt River. Like empty cruise-liners they dock next to the congested Main road where taxi’s wind through buses and cars.

My friend Rikus Mundey did his thesis on the reuse of the Rex Trueform building, (originally called the Judge Clothing Factory) designed by Max Policansky in 1937 – yep that’s an oldie, alright. A year later Policansky also did the factory next door – the Cavalla Cigarette Factory for his father. The two, because of various extensions and later renovations, look like one big building on Victoria Rd Salt River. The buildings are abandoned because Rex Trueform retrenched most of the staff about 5 years ago (instead of manufacturing clothes and creating employment, the owners decided to import from China and sell at their retail shop – Queenspark. Sad, I know, especially considering that most of the workers were the single breadwinners of many of the households on the Cape Flats). According to Rikus he once went inside just to discover that the spaces are being used as a paintball arcade!

Anyway, I am curious about Policansky for a few reasons: firstly because of the prolific amount of industrial buildings he designed. His factories are littered all over old industrial areas like Elsies River and Ndabeni; secondly because of the unapologetic functionalist manner these buildings were designed and executed; thirdly Policansky’s work could be considered as the first real introduction of modernism here at the Cape and with the industrial commissions that he received, a much bolder contribution than say the Transvaal Group led by Rex Martienssen and co who mostly experimented with private houses and apartments.

So for OH 13 – Policansky Monograph I am looking to gain access to these ‘icons of the garment industry’ Rex Trueform (Judge Clothing 1937) and Jordan Shoes (Invincible Factory 1950), in particular. Photo Credits: H Wolff

Judge Clothing (now Rex Trueform) - M Policanksy 1937-8
Photo Acknowledgement: HiltonT@Flickr

Jordan Shoes, formerly Invincible Factory Complex 1950 - M Policansky

Jordan Shoes, formerly Invincible Factory Complex 1950- M Policansky

Jordan Shoes, formerly Invincible Factory Complex 1950 - M Policansky

OH12 Garden Route

This time OH tours went national, well not exactly national – but let’s say ‘further a field’. The Architectural Forum of Knysna Plettenberg Bay invited me to show the work of that area. This is a significant step for OH tours because it seems that for the first time others have also begun to see the value of their architectural environment and decided to act on it. Of course I agreed and the result was a weekend trip to Knysna and Plett to look at some gorgeous holiday houses along the Garden Route– not bad for a long weekend. I was moved by three houses: House Elphick by Design Workshop, House Kemp by Peter Rich and Beach House Philips by Noero Wolff.

First of all, I don’t believe in luxury homes, let alone luxury HOLIDAY homes. I think that it is an anti – Marxist idea and promotes conspicuous consumption. That is until I walked into House Elphick, situated on the most exclusive beachfront ridge in Plettenberg Bay. It is an unapologetic display of wealth, but rather than showing us: hey! look at these expensive finishes I got from the far corners of god-knows-where – the money was spent on real invention: a louver system that is as much a party trick as it is a dynamic spatial experience. A colleague, who shares my semi-Marxists ideals, said to me that she was walking through the house thinking to herself, ‘I’m not suppose to like this, but I do.’ I share her sentiment – finally a luxury house with some real architectural thought and invention as opposed to the empty allure of luxury.

House Elphick - Design Workshop

House Kemp by Peter Rich, on the other end of the scale is a wooden cottage built with a tight budget. To me, even though it was a third of the size of House Elphick, it surpasses it in terms of spatial generosity quite simply because it seems unbounded by its own structure. Mevrou Kemp told me that 28 people happily camped out in this 4 bedroomed house one Christmas. This is because the house accommodates the compromises one is willing to make when on holiday, a sort of rejection, in a way of the up-tightness of the luxury holiday get away.

House Kemp - Peter Rich

Beach House Philips presents a middle ground between House Kemp and House Elphick. It is neither lavish nor monastic. Unlike House Elphick it sits inside of a suburban holiday neighbourhood but unlike House Kemp, it has a substantial view of the sea. What can I say, for me, Beach House Phillips is really about true architectural inventiveness: formally, diagrammatically and technically. Photo Credits: H Wolff

Beach House Phillips - Noero Wolff

OH11 Barnett Kantorowich Monograph

I’ve never been a fan of face brick. I always thought it is a harsh material. It also has this eerie-municipal quality which I have always disliked. That is until I came across the work of Roy Kantorowich and the magnificent building on the corner Long and Shortmarket Street, called Federate House, which he designed. Kantorowich worked in the 40’s and 50’s and unlike the other modernists obsessed with a streamlined, white plastered aesthetic, he wanted to exploit the durable (and decorative) qualities of face brick to come up with a unique expression. My research showed that he was a mentor to Jack Barnett and it only made sense to show their work in conjunction. Because little is known about Kantorowich, Professor Julian Cooke agreed to sketch a picture of the time in which he worked – an era which he terms as New Empiricism, a post-war rejection of the purity of the Modern Movement aesthetic as propagated by Le Corbusier. Barnett continued with this thinking in the 60’s and 70’s with the Baxter Theatre being his most famous expression of this ethos. In a great essay that Cooke wrote in the 1993’s July August edition of Architecture SA, he writes that the New Empiricists rejected two things of the International Style: one the lack of aesthetic expression beyond motifs and patterns and two, the lack of ‘warmth, richness and human quality that came with the abstract purity of the International Style aesthetic. With this in mind one can understand why the UCT Baxter Women’s residence, built in the 50’s, with its face brick exterior and pitch roofs does not look like your run of the mill Modern Movement building. The courtyard, is however the strongest part of the building as it is here where Kantorowich tried to insert the human quality he thought was lacking in the Modern icons of its day. Photo credits: H Wolff

Federated House - Roy Kantorowich

Baxter Theatre - Jack Barnett

Milnerton High School - Jack Barnett

Baxter Women's Residence - Roy Kantorowich

OH10 VDMMA Monograph

Van der Merwe Miszewski Architects headed by Anja Van der Merwe and Macio Miszewski is a practice mainly engaged in the designing of luxury homes. But what struck me about Tree House as well as Courtyard House (Anja’s personal home) is not the luxury of the building but the luxury of the space that it inhabits, makes and responds to. Tree House has always been a fascination for me. From the street, one sees a foot bridge, a wall which half conceals the interior and some interesting tree-like roof trusses supporting a thin concrete slab. The interior is tightly planned which I think forms a wonderful balance with the vast openness of the outside, appropriate for a city building. Courtyard House, as a suburban house, takes advantage of the big garden, the luxury of the suburbs. Being in Newlands it has the luxury to look at the mountain where as Tree House has the luxury to be in the mountain. Photo: H Wolff

Courtyard House

Tree House

OH8 & 9 Fagan Monographs

There is a couple in Cape Town who has had a major influence on South African Architecture. They are prolific in the amount of knowledge that they produce in the form of books, photographs, research and of course – architecture. As a married couple, and I was fortunate to be at their 60th wedding anniversary in 2009, Gwen and Gawie Fagan have inspired, informed and provoked architects not only in Cape Town but much further a field. The tour tried to acknowledge a career spanning over 60 years by showing the most notable conservation projects as well as their best new buildings. The climax of the tour was when all 100 + visitors squashed into their beach house in Langebaan to listen to them talk about their work and their life.

This was a truly memorable experience. Photo Credit: H Wolff

UCT Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine

Die Es

Paradys

Klein Constantia

OH7 Climate Skin

In response to the issue of ‘sustainability’ in architecture – an issue which is often exploited by the sale of gimmicks and tricks to ‘lower the carbon footprint of the building’ – I wanted to see what aspect of the building has the most influence in the saving of energy consumption. According to Paul Carew and Michelle Ludwig of PJC Consulting, the temperature control of the building has a huge role to play and, in turn, the design of the façade becomes vital. How one designs the façade of the building in terms of heat gain, solar control and daylight penetration can save major costs not to mention renewable energy. So we spent the day walking through the city and looking at building facades while Paul and Michelle pointed out the various features which make the facades energy efficient or not. Photo credits: Ches Besada

OH6 Pius Pahl Monograph

I started becoming intrigued by Pius Pahl when, at the Bauhaus museum in Berlin, I spotted a couple of his drawings on display. They were drawings of buildings designed by Mies van der Rohe who was one of the teachers at the Bauhaus School in Weimar from 1930 - 1933. I started investigating Pahl and found out that he was a German architect who married a South African woman and decided to move to a quiet dorpie of Stellenbosch shortly after World War II. He opened up a practice in Stellenbosch and the result is that Stellenbosch now has the biggest collection of private homes designed in the Bauhaus tradition. I just had to visit them.

Luckily I was not the only Bauhaus/Pahl enthusiast and I got in contact with a man who not only owns one of these Pahl gems but also restores and maintains his house in the suitable manner which respects the original intentions. He invited me to see his house and also put me in touch with other owners, who might I add, are very much aware of the significance of their properties. What struck me the most is the modesty in scale of these homes - service areas like bathrooms and kitchens are strictly utilitarian whereas the living areas are much more generous. This is in stark contrast to today's contemporary houses with large kitchens and expansive bathrooms. Photo credits: H Wolff, Architect and Builder

Huis Struwig

Huis Botha

Huis van Aarde

Huis Paauw

Huis Malan

Huis Trumpelmann

OH5 Dencity?

My attempt to be provocative and misspell the word density as ‘dencity’ did very little to provoke real debate about the current status of inner-city housing. There was, however, a heated exchange about the re-use of material at the Mandela Rhodes Building: should we or shouldn’t we? Mmm too much effort to recycle so let’s just buy new rare wooden parquet flooring tiles and throw out the old ones!

Mandela Rhodes atrium space - DHK

Inside a Mandela Rhodes apartment/hotelroom

What a pleasure to see some innovative planning as I discovered at Wonderviews Mews, a student residence on Mowbray Main road designed by Design Studio. I consequently got to know the owner quite well and what I found refreshing from my discussions with him is that he seems to be unswayed by class/racial/xenophobic tensions that exist in South Africa. As long as you can afford to pay the rental you are welcome as a tenant. The result is a ground floor that is a mini-mall of sorts where small scale entrepreneurs like hairdressers can ‘rent a chair’ within a bigger salon and thereby a number of hairdressers share the rental expense of the big salon. The student housing above is accessed from the back and although the planning is tight, the large volumes made it feel generous. I also loved the complexity of the street relationship that is created with the mobile screens on the first floor balcony: a nuanced private but public ambiguity.

Large volumes inside Wonderviews Mews - Design Studio

Main Rd facade - Wonderviews Mews Design Studio

Springfield Terrace in Woodstock, our last stop, is an overlooked gem as far as inner-city housing is concerned. Here the architects created real diversity within a simple pattern, the achievement here, of course is the public space. There are about 5-6 sets of duplexes with about four-five apartments each. Each apartment has a direct connection with the street via a balcony, stair or entrance. Because there are always residents looking onto the street, the street becomes a lively safe place to be. Using brick as a surface material throughout also allows it to become a multifarious space suited for pedestrian and vehicles equally. Photo credits: Cesar Besada

Springfield Terrace - Uytenbogaardt Rozendal