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OH ARCHITECTURE presents OH15 – Iain Low Lesotho Work. Over a period of 5 years, from 1982-1987, Professor Iain Low, architect and academic, implemented an integrated program to upgrade education and schools: the Training for Self Reliance Project [TSRP], that he designed and co-ordinated. Funded with an IDA loan from the World Bank for least developed countries, he worked on the 3rd and 4th phases of a project to design interventions at about 200 - 300 schools throughout Lesotho, thereby contributing enormously to the shortfall of education facilities in the country.  A system was evolved that would not only meet the demands of this massive service delivery project, but would also ensure local economic development and the continued growth and implementation of the project long after the designers of the system have moved on. On a visit to the projects with Iain Low in early January of 2013, we found that the system has indeed endured and continues to be successfully implemen...

A Modern Marriage OH_Review by Robert Silke 40 years on, Adèle and Tony Santos’ houses and apartments remain the Mother City’s most avant-garde . Architect Robert Silke, design partner at Louis Karol, met them in Cape Town last week after a decades-long absence. Architects are, as a rule, not good to each other. Whilst doctors and lawyers are known to cover for each other’s mistakes and Hollywood actors gush over each other’s work, architects (members of the world’s second oldest profession) can be catty and cruel to each other like the girls in a brothel-house. Which is probably why architects should never marry other architects. Architectural criticism comes to us far more naturally than architectural praise, and we’re often embarrassed when asked to name favourite buildings and to intellectualise why. It’s a very personal question, akin to describing why one finds a girl or boy attractive. In the Cape it’s even more difficult. Contemporary British architect Piers Gough said to me th...

I am totally excited about OH14. Not only are we visiting the most exquisitely designed homes and apartments in Cape Town but the architects - highly acclaimed Adèle Naudé Santos and Antonio de Souza Santos   WILL BE THERE! Adèle Naudé Santos is  the current dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in Boston  and  Antonio de Souza  Santos (Tony) is a  Professor of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.   Both have agreed to pause their very busy academic and practice schedules and join us in looking at these wonderful creations of the late 1960s and  early   1970s. OH14 will be a rare occasion to speak to, challenge and debate with these ex-South African architects about their work. Thank you to C&CI and BASA for generously sponsoring this event. To join OH14  BOOK HERE House Shear House Shear   Stekhoven House   Stekhoven House Scott Rd Apartments   Scott Rd Apartments Rowan Lane Rowa...

Ongoing research about Max Policansky's work culminated in a tour in September 2011. For the full article click here. For the OH13 Tour brochure click  here .

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...