'CLOCKS ON THE FLOOR - Towards a respatialising of time in Rex Trueform.' - by Ilze Wolff

'Clocks on the Floor': towards re-spatializing time in Rex Trueform, is a long essay publication that explores ideas around how the 20th century African factory has vividly spatialised the entanglement of modern constructions of space, time, personhood, labour and idleness. It interprets, amongst other, the use and the design of the 55 minute hour, a technique Rex Trueform implemented during the 1940s to increase productivity on the factory floor. I argue here that it formed part of a general modernist civilizing and disciplining of black bodies. 

The 55 minute hour has now been used in the title of 'Live Architecture: the 55 minute hour', an event made possible by Off Plan International curators Mary Corrigall, Amy Watson and Neliswe Xaba. They have invited a host of amazing artists including: Zyma Amien, Igshaan Adams, Bernardo Guiamba, Jenevieve Lyons, Gerald Machona, Francesco Nassimbeni and Richard De Jager, Buhlebezwe Siwani and James Webb to produce work for their event which takes place in a disused factory in Salt River. 

Details:
16 February 2016 
6pm-8pm

Trubok Building

15 Brickfield Road, Salt River

More information about the event:

http://artweekcapetown.co.za/featured-project/
Publisher

Wolff Architects

Cost

This book is on sale for R100 per copy.

Order via email info@wolffarchitects.co.za

OH16_Rex Trueform

Open House, exhibitions and films.

Our engagement with the Rex Trueform factories in Salt River has continued. Between 2014-2015 we organised an Open House of the buildings, organised an on site exhibition and produced a short film. The film, which can be viewed below, raises questions of identity formation and modernist space, a main research preoccupation of ours. Thank you to MUTI films for the production, Mark Donough for his descriptions of factory life and Sandy Policansky for her generous time and insight into her father, Max Policansky's life.

Documentation of a modern factory through event, exhibition and film. 

  

Open House to the Rex Trueform factory, a space that has become a point of reflection on its past, once a place of intense urban industry, as well as a point of entry into the ways modern architecture played a role in shaping our societies and our identities.

OH16 Rex Trueform, Monatic & SA Naval College: Andrews and Niegeman Monograph

BOOKINGS CLOSED

The next Cape Town based OH will review the work of Andrews and Niegeman, focussing specifically on the architectural production of its founding partners  E. Douglas Andrews and Henk Th. O Niegeman.  The OH will include the Rex Trueform factories, Bertish factory (now House of Monatic) and SA Naval Staff College. Andrews and Niegeman are considered as Cape Town's pioneer modernist architects who produced innovative and creative work during the 1940s and 1950s. The work will be reviewed within the context of their time, taking stock of the kind of architectural space that was produced under the conditions of South African modernity such as racial segregation, industrialization and nationalism. 

Prior to coming to Cape Town in 1936/7 Dutch born and trained architect Henk Niegeman travelled extensively working in Europe, Asia and Russia. He also worked in Belgian colonized Congo and is photographed here in a one-wheeled rickshaw carried by two men with two others in the background. Photo courtesy of Dr Eitan Karol.

Example of the kind of work Niegeman was engaged in in the Congo prior to arriving in Cape Town. Photo courtesy of Dr Eitan Karol.

Henk Niegeman (left) teamed up with E. Douglas Andrews (right) in 1939 to start Andrews & Niegeman architects. Niegeman and Andrews worked in the office of Max Policansky (see OH13) where he was the project architect on the first Rex Trueform factory, Salt River, in 1938 (below). 

The top floor of the factory accommodated the cloak rooms which were divided along race and gender. The windows, visible from Main Road, illustrate these divisions. The windows to the cloakrooms of the last three rectangular bays and adjacent six port-hole windows were dedicated to the toilets and cloakrooms for 'Non-European Women'. The rest were, in sequence, 'Non-European Men', 'European Women', 'European Men.' Here, the form strictly followed function and the facade became a taxonomy of race and gender.

In 1944 a fire destroyed most of the building and Andrews & Niegeman was commissioned to rebuild and alter the building. The renovations included moving the toilets and cloakrooms to the back (with the racial and gender divisions organized along four different levels),  demolishing the side balcony and renovating the Main Road balcony. The image above gives an idea of A&N's new design, which is pretty much how it looks today.

Besides their renovation to the Policansky-designed factory,  a new factory for Rex Trueform (1948) and M Bertish (1951), both in Salt River, stand out as key buildings of the early practice.

Rex Trueform 1948

M Bertish (now House of Monatic) 1951

Rex Trueform in 2012. Photo By Chantal van Staden

M Bertish circa 1975-1980. Photo courtesy of Dr Eitan Karol

Henk Niegemen designed a house for himself called Alma Ata in Hout Bay. The location and  condition is unknown to me. Below are some photos of the interior and furniture that he designed, thanks to Dr Eitan Karol.

Finally, the SA Naval Staff College (pictured below by Heinrich Wolff) is also a great example of the firm's early work. 

  

Other examples and more history on the firm and the architects are listed here on the Artefacts website.

       

OPEN HOUSE ARCHITECTURE is an official participant in World Design Capital Cape Town 2014