flynn098

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 ...

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 show...

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...

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 Paradys Paradys Klein Constantia  Klein Constantia

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

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 si...

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

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 entrepr...