Architecture of the Third Landscape

Architecture of the third lAndscApe

AWARD-WinninG BUiLDinGS OF The FRee STATe Pattabi G Raman and Jako Olivier

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ISBN 978-0-620-45947-1

CONTENTS arcHitecture, the sublime and the free state landscape

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Pattabi G Raman | Jako Olivier

conservation Introduction

19

House Van Rensburg, Philippolis, Kobus Du Preez Argitek

20

House Horne, Bloemfontein, Frikkie Horne | The Roodt Partnership

24

House at Klerksvly, Qwa Qwa National Park, MNI Architects

32

House Pienaar, Bloemfontein, The Roodt Partnership

36

Refurbishment of Main Building, Unversity of the Free State,

46

Bannie Britz Argitek & Stedelike Ontwerper | Chrystal van Beukering

Buildings in the city and the university Introduction

55

Firmitas Building, Bloemfontein, Jan Ras Architects’ Group cc

56

Student Centre, Bloemfontein, The Roodt Partnership

64

Houses and house extensions Introduction

75

House Britz, Bloemfontein, Bannie Britz Argitek & Stedelike Ontwerper

76

House Smit, Bloemfontein, SM!T Architects

82

House Enkalwani, Bloemfontein, SM!T Architects | Henry Pretorius

90

House Uys, Bloemfontein, SM!T Architects

98

House Relling, Bloemfontein, Hennie Lambrechts Argitekte

104

House Rosmarin, Clarens, Michael Scholes and Associate Architect

108

Vaal Estate Studio, Sasolburg, Elphick Proome Architects

116

Architecture of the industrial town Introduction

127

Architecture of necessity: Laboratory building, Sasol Midlands, Geldenhuys & Jooste Architects

128

Architecture of empowerment: Kgodiso business centre, Sasolburg, Geldenhuys & Jooste Architects

138

Last Word

148

Dirk van den Berg

BIBLIOGRAPHY

152

Photograph by Mari Girard, Free State, South Africa, 2009

Photograph by Mari Girard, Free State, South Africa, 2009

The attributes of architecture in the Free State are closely intertwined with the local inhabitants’ cultural construction of the landscape. The Free State is itself structured and layered by Afrikaner2 cultural symbolism. Afrikanerdom and its evolution, the settlers’ struggle and relationship with the land are by no means more unique than those of any of the other cultures living in the Free State. To be frank, the practices of claiming, cultivating, settling, eventual displacement, persecution and the scorched earth policy by competing European settlers are sadly not much different from those of any of the other local groups. Nevertheless, the works we are dealing with here are largely by architects , of Afrikaner progeny or influenced by the Afrikaner way of placemaking, and as a prelude we need to consider the superimposed Afrikaners’ psyche, sprung from the repeated struggle for independence, for land, for a language and a particular piety and religious zeal. Hidden within this historical milieu and directly related to the Afrikaners’ relationship with the land are two themes identified by Du Preez and Swart: “On the one hand, Homo Faber – the fabricator of the habitable world – consciously aimed at creating an existential foothold in such infinity. On the other hand, Homo Conquistador is a constant wanderer, always crossing the next horizon in search of the unknown” 3. In the Afrikaner scheme of things working with the land and imposing what was conceived as God’s will are not necessarily contradictions. This outlook is implicit in nearly all the works that are evaluated in this book. An example might be in order here. Bannie Britz in his conservation work on the Main Building at the University of the Free State certainly values the old building for its historic external expression and the lofty internal volumes, but does not hesitate to impose on it what he sees as the correct thing to do, namely a new central stair, open plan offices to counter the claustrophobic cellular rooms and a garden with a labyrinth at the rear. It is possible to imagine that an architect with non-Afrikaner predilections would have approached the problem differently. While this is a secular building, one needs to understand that the strength of the inherited spiritual outlook always underlines, albeit under conscious protest, everything an Afrikaner descendant does.

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

The Free State can be broadly portrayed as a horizontal grass plane or infinite veldt stretching from the west and contained to the east by a thin strip of towering mountains. It is a landscape of cosmic light and dark thunderstorms; of gigantic heavens or at most an equal distribution of earth and sky and strips of yellow mielies. It contains farms, farmers and towns with church towers regularly frequented by quiet and far-off Protestants and the tikoloshe. With its kraals and reservoirs, it became, over a period of time, the homeland for the collective memory of two very beautiful but singular and to a large extent disparate people, namely the Basotho and the Afrikaners.

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he Free State constitutes the geographical heart of South Africa and the southern threshold to the great African savanna. Some would argue that in many senses it is the epicenter of South Africa.1 And yet, overseas visitors and the majority of South Africans hardly go to the Free State; it is not much more than a transit route from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Even today its position of halfway house persists.

Architecture of the third landscape

T

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape

3

Photograph by Mari Girard, Free State, South Africa, 2009

Photograph by Mari Girard, Free State, South Africa, 2009

With respect to the British onslaught on Afrikaners, why would one group of European settlers want to expel another group in this way? It is fair to say that the Afrikaners thought that there is more to this than mere territorial ambition. Ironically, the post-colonial theory of writers like Homi Bhabha casts much light here.5 The compulsion to colonize, argues Bhabha, is a result of the colonizer’s representation of the colonized as being inferior, and what makes the Afrikaners bitter to this day is that the British had this feeling towards them.

The Afrikaners’ association with the Free State began between 1835 and 1845 when groups of Dutch farmers, mostly from the eastern part of the Cape Colony, started to move to the interior of Southern Africa6. This process of emigration, later known as the Great Trek, took place after the English occupation of the Cape in 1814 with the subsequent introduction of new laws, ostentatiously liberal in intent but calculated to impose restrictions on land ownership and method of payment for the indigenous people and exposing Afrikaners to severe insecurity. The reasons for the Great Trek were the lack of farm land, labourers and security, amounting to unlivable conditions for the original settlers in the Eastern district of the Colony7.

Although the Afrikaner settlers were wealthy farmers in the Cape, even unknown territory and dangers that could lurk inland were seen as more promising and less of a threat than the British. By the time the farmers were preparing to move from their farms, they were already mentally disconnected from the land. As Olive Schreiner points out “…that which most embittered

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape | Award-winning buildings of the Free State |

Liminality and its consequences It would appear that the memory of displaced and wandering ancestors is to this day felt by the Afrikaner. The Cape settlement was originally formed by Dutch sailors, traders and farmers travelling to the unfamiliar. This population was enlarged by the arrival of the Huguenots, Protestants who fled from France to escape religious persecution, and German mercenaries, escaping the Thirty Year War in Europe. Later the Afrikaner population was further added to by the arrival of Scottish theologians, with their families, to preach in the Dutch reformed churches. Scots too, oppressed as they were by the introduction of sheep by the English and the resulting Highland clearances, have a special relation to the land they inhabit.

With the use of slaves from the East, Mozambique, Madagascar and Angola, and the restricted exchanges with the local population of San, Khoi-Khois and Xhosa (through trade, war and even marriage) the Afrikaners emerged as a composite population. The Dutch language, law and culture absorbed most of the other cultures it encountered, allowing for a limited but rich injection and forming a new language. Frequently attacked by the native population and more importantly the British, these essentially nomadic people were constantly confronted with liminal space out of which they needed to forge a sense of place and identity.

Architecture of the third landscape

As Van Coller4 has demonstrated, the cultural history of the Afrikaner is largely a representation of the farm, the town and the city and in many ways most of the works illustrated in this monograph resonate with the story of a typical Afrikaner family’s peregrination from the farm to the city. They are fragments of contemporary cultural history with firm roots in the past as revealed by present-day architecture.

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Paul Klee, Klarung (1932)

The whole enterprise must have been sombre, needing a great deal of articulation on where one is, where one is going and what one needs to do in order to get there. It occurs to us that the stark but evocative painting of Klarung (Clarification) by Paul Klee (1932) can serve as a possible analogue for at least the relation between the terrain and the modest settlements that needed to be formed. The economy of effort expended by Klee is revealing. To us, the painting illustrates the liminality of the Afrikaner colonials and the place of their modest homes in the new territory. In a strange way it is also suggestive of their desire to make humble settlements, forge places and communities, showing determination to make order, a relatively rigid one at that, out of the bleak landscape and the rather non-assertive buildings.

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

The Afrikaners who left their farms in the Cape Colony were little more than nomads and the Cape Synod proclaimed with dismay that the Trekkers were entering the desert without a Moses or Aaron to guide them on their search for a new Canaan.9 By entering the interior, the Afrikaners were entering a liminal space, a cultural and physical landscape that constituted a moment of possibility and transformation; that would alter the collective consciousness, and at the same time ignite the search for a communal sense of place. The Trekkers were leaving civilization for an in-between state, wandering from one side and longing to settle on the other. Often the sole literary companion for the Afrikaner farmer on his journey was the family Bible. The word of God was directly interpreted, His wrath was feared, and the commandments seen as the unswerving regulator of the paternal flock. Orthodox, Calvinistic theology was preached from the beginning in the new settlement, asserting a unique relationship between God, chosen individuals and the community of believers. If we are to trust Fromm it might have been Calvin’s theory of predestination that would later form the basis for a principle of basic inequality of men. 10 The Dutch Reformed Church demonstrated a certain reluctance to the liberal reformation of the Enlightenment. The religious force and conservatism of the Afrikaner formed an almost stoic, cold and realistic worldview, and was noted for its piety.11

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A liminal stage such as the one the Afrikaners went through during the Great Trek often leads to the suspension of such differences as social class and hierarchy and to the formation of a community based on common humanity. Dangerous though the liminal territory is, it becomes alluring and even sacred. Participants here can become anonymous, showing obedience, humility and conforming to prescribed forms of conduct.

Architecture of the third landscape

the hearts of the colonists was the cold indifference with which they were treated, and the consciousness that they were regarded as a subject and inferior race‌[The] feeling of bitterness became so intense that in about 1836 large numbers of individuals determined to leave for ever the colony and the homes they created.� 8

The journey into the interior is one of a turbulent history of wars with the native tribes, and more significantly the two AngloBoer Wars. The succession of wars rendered the settlers tough and perseverant. In the case of the Anglo-Boer Wars, the determined Boer commandos disrupted the advancing British colonizers very effectively and the severe retaliation of the latter is well known. Afrikaner farms in the Free State, as elsewhere, were burned down, women and children were removed 7

Tobie Mullerstraat, Phillippolis by Jens Friis

‘n Blik op Philippolis by Jens Friis

Philippolis lê in ‘n Kom by Jens Friis

Philippolis Middedorp by Jens Friis

Within a few years the Afrikaners took ownership of the land and the same alien environment was suddenly viewed as picturesque.

The description of Heilbron around 1900 as “a typical dorp, with a few stores, a hotel, a church, and some pretty houses with shady stoeps and peach trees planted in the gardens, a happy village with nothing whatever beyond its boundaries but earth, springboks, guinea-fowls, korhaan, mealies, sheep, cattle, hares, and stony kopjes upraising their flat heads from leagues of level ground for no reason at all”13 serves well to explain the Romantic appreciation the Afrikaner developed for the land. There was and still is in the Free State a highly developed sense of what is entailed in making a home and feeling at home as settlers. As Du Preez and Swart put it “The act of creating a finite sense of place in the immensity of a cosmic landscape is acute in the Free State, Northern Cape and Karoo. And yet, it is as if the settlements of the interior amplify the polarity of enclosure and transience – a quality that from its earliest beginnings determined both its architectural and urban character”14.

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape | Architecture of the third landscape

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Perhaps this turbulent history, the religious outlook, and the tough choices people had to make in the desert-like landscape of the veldt made the Afrikaners robust, down to earth, sincere and deeply rooted to the land. These elements of the Afrikaner persona were directly translated into the architecture of the Free State. Buildings were honest edifices − simple symmetry often being the only decorative consideration. The building façades were left uncluttered and the aesthetic value resided in the balance and harmony of the individual parts. Constructed out of stone, mud bricks or wattle and daub, sometimes plastered and white-washed, the buildings were of simple square or rectangular geometry. The roofs and verandas were mostly made of corrugated iron, painted silver to reflect the sun and the heat. Good examples of this are to be found in many of the Free State towns, notably Philippolis and Fauresmith, and the pioneer houses recorded by James Walton. The use of this modest material was later extended for the façades as well. Interestingly, some of the simplicity and frugality of outlook can be witnessed in some of the buildings that concern us, for example, House Smit. Corrugated iron roofs on nearly all the buildings as well as church towers in towns, and wind pumps on farms became an essential part of the interior landscape.

The crisp presence of the limited number of materials and definite geometrical shapes of the first buildings and settlements stood clear against the vast landscape – proclaiming places of sorts in the barren wilderness. In the urban settlements, the church tower rose above the horizon very often signifying solitary human presence12. As if to underline the religious divide between good and evil, only an unambiguous shadow line adorned these bright buildings. Such simplicity and directness can be attributed to the values of the Dutch Reformed Church and we should bear in mind that this is not unique to the Afrikaners.

In fact something of its force can be felt by many of the buildings recently built by Hans van der Laan in Holland.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

from their homes and put in concentration camps, the first of their kind, where thousands died of disease and malnutrition.

From liminality to sublimity The transition from the landscape being fearsome, vast and monotonous to being beautiful is a complex one. Liminality certainly induces religiosity of sorts. Orthodox Calvinistic theology was preached from the beginning. The burgers believed in a covenant between God and themselves and their descendants for a thousand generations.15 The idea of a nation of 9

Walter Meyer, House on the Outskirts

Walter Meyer, Home near Gariep

The sublime combines the contrasting experiences of horror and harmony. One cannot think of a better example than Victor Hugo’s works, including the Hunchback of Notre Dame. As Burke would have it, from horror a pleasure can be felt; as we know that the perception of it in an aesthetic sense, is fiction. Burke understood the sublime object to overwhelm or frighten us at first20. Our dread of its qualities must be radically transmuted before the qualities appear aesthetically pleasing. When Burke qualifies the sublime object as having to be simple enough to be apprehended in a single expansive view rather than in a succession of distinct views, the panoramic and cosmic topos of the Free State immediately appears apt.

For Immanuel Kant beauty is related to form and has boundaries whereas the sublime is to be found in the formless and the boundless21. The sublime experience, if Kant is to be trusted, entails a conflict of the faculties of imagination and reason22 whereas beauty entails a harmonious state between imagination and reason. The sublime is seen by Kant to be an aesthetic encounter with an object, where the sensory impression of the encounter cannot be related to an idea of reason by the imagination.23 Kant, however, thought the sublime only to reside in the mind of the subject and not in the object itself, thus

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

Sublimity is about lofty narratives and can inspire awe and veneration, not only in physical features but also in a moral, intellectual and aesthetic stance. Longines in his first century AD text, Peri Hupsous or On the sublime cites examples from the writings of Homer and the Bible. Of course since his days, thinkers of many persuasions have applied and extended this concept to the particular subject they were considering. Certainly among them there are slight disagreements: To the British philosophers of the Eighteenth century the sublime is not something that is opposed to beauty but it is a quality of higher order than beauty18. For Edmund Burke the two qualities are mutually exclusive19. Reflecting on even this one example of difference, one feels the original meaning of the term, namely that it is a lofty narrative that instills awe and veneration, remains unchanged but each writer makes a nuanced interpretation of it depending on the subject and themes under consideration.

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Throughout its brief history, the Afrikaner was marked by resentment of the British for what was perceived as unfair constraints being placed on them and of being relegated to what in effect was a hostile territory. This certainly fostered a brooding but determined outlook.16 It is important to understand the strength of the Afrikaners’ character and terrain before one can appreciate their architectural outlook. This history of oppression, combined with the comparatively infertile land of monotony and extreme horizontality must have been daunting for the settlers. Yet a host of writers, artists and indeed architects have hailed from this seemingly unpromising terrain who have opened up every facet of its landscape to creative possibilities17.

How does one explain this phenomenon? Apart from the consequences of liminality to which the Afrikaners were subjected which we discussed above, the aesthetic conception of the sublime provides us with a further explanation.

Architecture of the third landscape

the covenant would later become part of the nationalistic dogma, and was used to fall in line and unify the ‘volk’ on more than one occasion.

11

Pauline Gutter, Brandfort Landscape

Pauline Gutter, Uit die Blou van onse Hemel

Pauline Gutter, Landscape near Zastron

“Moral judgment is justified by reason, and so we are compelled to think of values as rational. It is reason itself that underwrites our freedom. But reason, like nature, is infinite. Nature is vast, containing, making us feel insignificant in its presence. This feeling, born out of reflection, disturbs us. But that which contains us can itself be contained by us, at least in thought. In this we come upon an ambiguous consolation of calm, rational, ‘religious’ reflection and the feeling of the sublime that such reflections engender” 27.

Crude argumentation may lead us to say that in the face of such infiniteness and wilderness seen by the trekkers, religiosity is simply a reflex, but it must be remembered that in the Protestant view of things religion is a calm and rational experience and so is the sublime.

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape | Architecture of the third landscape

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Schopenhauer sees the move from the beautiful to the sublime as a transition26, the reverse of what we have so far been discussing in relation to the Free State. For many twentieth century thinkers the sublime is related to the jettisoning of personal fear and the suffering of others in the name of an inexorable fate, thereby gaining an exalted state for the self. With ease Edward Winter fuses religion and this personal or perhaps existential fear. If nature, he argues, were revealed by science and not engineered by a higher power – confronted with the unknown, a panic might have forced the pioneer in the Free State deeper into religion itself – then man would still feel the burden of the enormity that shaped him.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

“nature is a means to the experience, but…only in so far as it involves formlessness and excess of magnitude in terms of size and power” 24. Kant intended the subject of the sublime to occupy an in-between position. Jacques Derrida understood this to mean that in order to comprehend the sublime, one needs to be neither too close nor too far from the object. Indeed, it is in such in-between space that Du Preez and Swart suppose the essential Free State settler, and the architectural attributes of their works originate. They argue that “…given the pronounced interface between settlement and cosmic landscape, the threshold between inside and out is a pivotal feature of both settler and vernacular architecture. The demarcation of the threshold finds expression in traditional architectural elements ranging from the enclosing yard, habitual stoep to embellished openings of differing size and orientation”.25 Again contemporary examples might help to illuminate the conception, Bannie Britz, provides it in the design of his house in Bloemfontein. Consider the threshold between the forecourt and the new house or indeed the existing one on the site. Few architects would have lavished so much care on this as Britz has. Likewise in the interior, the threshold between the entrance hall and other rooms and the transition from the dining room to the rear garden past the maid’s room via a patio are meticulously calculated.

In case it is thought that the recourse to sublimity here is intellectualising away the horrors of apartheid, let us remember that darkness, infinite extension, exaggeration and excesses are the very thing that arouse the feelings of sublimity. “As a kind of terror” writes Terry Eagleton, “the sublime crushes us into submission; it thus resembles a coercive rather than a consensual power…”28.

From Burke onwards, the aesthetic experience of the sublime is of course analysed from the point of view of the well-to-do, 13

the learned and the cultivated, but there would seem to be a need, especially in our South African context, for a poor man’s version of it. As Eagleton suggests religion is such a candidate. Another, he argues, is labour. It “involves gratifying coerciveness and is thus an aesthetic experience all in itself…and this agreeableness of labour is even more gratifying to those who profit from it”. 29 Sublimity also has a place in the aesthetics of Karl Marx30. It includes, in parallel with Hegel’s bad infinity, bad sublimity and, rather diffidently, a good one. Commodity and endless accumulation is obviously monstrous sublimity while the good one is the bourgeois revolution. The latter is grudgingly admitted as a good one because Marx felt that the rhetoric accompanying such revolutions is always out of proportion to their meagre content. Looking at Humphries Jooste’s quiet project for black shopkeepers, one wonders whether Marx would have been less grudging.

Jean-François Lyotard engages with Kant’s version of the sublime where its formlessness is being unrepresentable despite our awareness of its existence. It is precisely this, argues Lyotard, that modernists such as Barnet Newman (1905 – 1970) and Mark Rothko (1903 -1970) wrestle with in their works 31. The Free State, with the exclusion of the Eastern mountainous region, would likely have confronted the early traveler with an image so formless and vast as to question the established understanding of landscape and inhabitation. Lyotard is even more specific and suggests the founding principle of modernism is the sublime, and it pushes us to the edge of our perceptual prowess in replacing the idea of beauty and style with something that is of a higher order32. Of course it has to be conceded that modernism did not have as much success in that endeavour as we once hoped, but most of the projects we are concerned with have. Is it not significant that in a provincial city such as Bloemfontein the relatively progressive notion of architecture as parallel landscape should have an expression in the works of the Smits? Lyotard suggests further that modernism tries to emancipate the work from the limitations of mimesis and the canon of the beautiful. We should not therefore be surprised that with the exception of the house at Klerksvly, Qwa Qwa National Park, none of the conservation projects we are concerned with are mimetic in any way. It is also worth noting that despite gaining an award the Klerksvly project was criticised for its partial view of mimesis33. And, unmistakably, an example of a higher order than beauty that Lyotard has in mind is to be found in the Vaal Estate Studio. The concept of the sublime then helps us place the Free State landscape as a backdrop for the architecture of the past and that which we are now considering.

From sublimity to magical realism The concept of the sublime having its developmental roots in the eighteenth century has its limitations in illuminating the theoretical conceptions of today, although the enduring characteristics of Afrikaner culture and expression still embrace it rather energetically. Perhaps sublimity needs to be complemented with more up-to-date conceptions dealing with issues of culture and expression. One such notion is the idea of magical realism, which is by no means unrelated to the concept of the sublime. Like the sublime, magical realism embraces opposites, for instance, reality as well as the supernatural, the latter

Bloemfontein is a city of memories and it has replaced history. Most architects who build here are more informed by memory than history and indeed when the history of the city is fully presented, both students and professionals are surprised. That is the extent to which memory has taken more of a hold than history.

Many unusual aspects of the Free State landscape, environment and architecture escape the visitor. The local architects are surprised that it does. The enthusiasm of personalities such as Humphries Jooste for his very modest buildings for the local heavy industry and the poor black shopkeepers in Sasolburg is one aspect of this. Calvino’s allegory of a street suspended over a bamboo grove can be felt in a number of projects with which this monograph is concerned. For instance House Uys, an urban farmstead in the veldt; the Student Centre for the University of the Free State, an inhabited bridge at a campus over a nondescript road; the Main Building, a work in praise of the sublime; the Vaal Estate Studio which is a modernist installation in the wilderness - the possibilities for exploring the magical realism in all these works are endless. This finally is the achievement of the work of these architects who have been deservingly recognized by the Institute. If nature out there, the raw terrain before any human intervention or wilderness as it were is the first landscape, the second is the inhabited or dwelt one and the third in our conception arises from the apprehension of liminality, sublimity and magical realism. Five projects by the Smits, three of them award-winning ones, have been covered in a separate monograph35. Interestingly however the three award-winning projects encapsulate to varying degrees notions of liminality, sublimity and magical realism. Therefore in this publication we engage only with aspects of the chosen buildings that relate to these aspects of the third landscape.

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape Architecture of the third landscape

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Returning to contemporary architecture another passage from Calvino is informative of the embedded magical realism of Bloemfontein: “Though it is painstakingly regimented, the city life flows calmly like the motion of celestial bodies and it incorporates the inevitability of phenomena not subject to human caprice. In praising Andria’s citizens for their productive industry and their spiritual ease, I was led to say: I can well understand how you, feeling yourselves part of an unchanging heaven, cogs in meticulous clockwork, take care not to make the slightest change in your city and your habits. Andria is the only city I know where it is best to remain motionless in time. They looked at one another dumbfounded. “But why, who ever said such a thing? And they led me to visit a suspended street recently opened over a bamboo grove.”

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As one drives from Johannesburg, the real gateway to South Africa today, along that never-ending straight road with monotonously flat terrain on both sides, one remembers Italo Calvino’s passage about finding a city34: “When a man rides for a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. … Isidora is the city of his dreams.

The dreamed of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age … Desires are already memories.”

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

as a prosaic reality but embedded in authentic accounts of humanity and community. The writer who uses the literary mode of magical realism who is most relevant to our subject matter is Italo Calvino.

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(Endnotes) 1

It always held the position of being able to tip the balance in important political decisions. Many architects of the apartheid system came from here.

The African National Congress opposing the apartheid system was founded here and many political leaders of today come from the Free State or the

adjoining one of Northern Cape.

2 The term Afrikaner, in this document very broadly implies the farmers, later known as Voortrekkers, from Dutch descent that partook in the

Great Trek and then settled in the Free State.

3

Du Preez, K. & Swart, G. (2009) The Interior: Free State, Northern Cape & Karoo.

In Joubert, O. (Ed.) 10 Years + 100 Buildings: Architecture in a Democratic South Africa. Cape Town, Bell Roberts: 220-221

4 Van Coller, H.P. (2006) Die representasie van Plaas, Dorp en Stad in die Afrikaanse Prosa. Tydskrif van die Afrikaanse Letterkundevereniging.

18 (1) Mar: 90-121

5

Bhabha, H.K. (1994) The Location of Culture. London, Routledge.

6

Giliomee, H. (2004) Die Afrikaners: ‘n Biografie. Cape Town, Tafelberg-Uitgewers: 105

7

Ibid.:109

8

Ibid.:112

9

Ibid.:112

10 Fromm, E. (2008) The Fear of Freedom. Cornwall, Routledge: 77. (original work published 1942) 11 The burgers believed in a covenant between God and themselves as with their descendants for a thousand generations similar to the Biblical covenant

between God and the Jews. Giliomee, H. Op. cit.: 112 &125

12

Schoeman, K. (1982) Vrystaatse Erfenis: Bouwerk en geboue in die 19de eeu. Cape Town, Human & Rousseau: 58

13

Ibid.:122

14

Du Preez, K. & Swart, G. Op. cit.:220

15

Believed to be similar to the biblical covenant between God and the Jews. Giliomee, H. Op. cit.: 125

16 This suggestion is no way meant to underestimate the brutalities of the Afrikaner conception of apartheid. To imply that abused children become abusing

parents is to understand but not to condone or become an apologist. Interestingly, Bhabha comes to similar conclusions. Bhabha, H. Op. cit.: 87

17

Writers: Etienne Leroux, Antjie Krog, Olga Kirsch, Andre P. Brink, C.M. van den Heever. Artists: Walter Meyer, Pauline Gutter

18

Budd, M. (2003) The Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature. Oxford, Oxford University Press

19

Burke, E. (1958) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. London, Routledge. (original work published 1756)

20

Patrik, L.E. (1978) The Aesthetic Significance of Ruination: Hermeneutic Study of Ancient Ruins. (Doctoral Dissertation) Northwestern University, Illinois

21

Kant, I. (1951) Critique of Judgement. (Translated: Bernard, J.H.) London, Macmillan.: 77

22

Kant, I. Ibid.: 95

23

Geertsema, J. (2006) White Native? Dan Roodt, Afrikaner Identity and the Politics of the Sublime, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 41(3):103-120

24

Oblak, M. (1995) Kant and Malevich: The Possibility of the Sublime. In Crowther, P. (Ed) The Contemporary Sublime: Sensibility of Transcendence

and Shock. Art & Design. London, Academic Editions:35

25

Du Preez, K. & Swart, G. Op. cit.: 221

Ibid.: 57

30 Marx, K. (1975) Economics and Philosophical Manuscripts. InColetti, L. (Ed.) Early writings. Harmondsworth, Penguin.

31

Lyotard, Jean-Franรงois. (1994) Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (Translated: Rottenberg, E.) Stanford, Stanford University Press: 58

32

Ibid.: 93

33 The general criticism is that the client and the architect were, in their enthusiasm to see this house as a typical Afrikaner farmhouse, removed from

other historically significant accretions.

34

Calvino, I. (1974) Invisible Cities (Translated: Weaver, W.) London, Secker & Warburg: 8. (original work published 1972)

35 Raman, P. & Pretorius, H. Layered Pragmatism. Forthcoming publication by Xpozure.

IMAGES Pauline Gutter | www.paulinegutter.co.za Jens Friis | www.philippolis.co.za Walter Meyer | www.waltermeyer.co.za | www.waltermeyeroilpaintings.co.za Marie Girard | www.mg-photo.com

Architecture, the sublime and the Free State landscape

29

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The Contemporary Sublime: Sensibility of Transcendence and Shock. Art & Design. London, Academic Editions.: 77

28 Eagleton, T. (1990) The Ideology of the Aesthetics. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.: 54.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

Winters, E. (1995) Religion, Transcendence, The Light and The Dark: The work of Jo Volley and Marcus Rees Roberts. In Crowther, P. (Ed.)

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Schopenhauer, A.(1969) The World as Will and Representation. (Vol 2). (Translated: Paybe, E.F.J.) New York, Dover Edition: 203

27

Architecture of the third landscape

26

17

CONTENTS

conservation

Introduction

19

House Van Rensburg, Philippolis Kobus du Preez Argitek

20

House Horne, Bloemfontein Frikkie Horne | The Roodt Partnership

24

House at Klerksvly, Qwa Qwa National Park MNI Architects

32

House Pienaar, Bloemfontein The Roodt Partnership

36

Refurbishment of Main Building, University of the Free State Bannie Britz Argitek & Stedelike Ontwerper | Chrystal van Beukering

46

Happily for South Africa, neither this rigidity nor the license to do whatever one likes with old buildings prevails.

Instinctively, architects seem to know where one needs to be circumspect and where one can intervene radically.

Perhaps Gawie Fagan’s conservation and renewal projects epitomize this outlook towards propriety1 and serve as an inspiration for many. Thus, in the Free State, we have conservation projects that range from works that return old buildings to their original use and appearance, while adding to them in a way that is in keeping with their original language to create a radical but circumspect transformation. The award-winning conservation projects covered in this monograph are a good representation of this range. Central to all of them however, is the fact that in addition to being of historic value, each of these works can be seen as having a presence in the broader landscape, whether it is wilderness, urban or suburban landscape, or the edge city veldt.

1

Conservation | Award-winning buildings of the Free State |

he 1960’s was a period of universal indifference towards conservation. At that time many distinguished British practices openly declared in the RIBA handbook of practices that they would not do any work on old buildings. Paralleled by this disinterest was the so-called comprehensive redevelopment of city centres which led to the wanton destruction of many historic areas and buildings in most British towns and cities. Comprehensive redevelopment was an offshoot of Le Corbusier’s projects such as Plan Viosin which envisaged the demolition of many historic parts of Paris to make way for skyscrapers set in what Le Corbusier saw as park-like settings. Fortunately, this did not happen and countries like Italy, because of prevailing economic conditions, escaped comprehensive redevelopment. For them reuse of old buildings was cheaper than demolition and replacement with new structures. Furthermore, the phenomenon called campanalismo, that is to say pride in local history, led to an emphasis on preservation. However, spearheaded

by Carlo Scarpa, considerable interest in radical transformation of old buildings with an accompanying juxtaposition of old and new developed in Italy. From the 1970’s on there was a growing universal interest in conservation of heritage leading to a number of charters and guidelines on what can and cannot be done with old buildings. While architects like Scarpa enjoyed relative freedom, often doing alterations without local authority consent or applying for them after the modifications, today there is a feeling among architects that conservation guidelines are rather rigid and that they stifle creativity.

Architecture of the third landscape

T

conservation

See H. Pretorius and P. G. Raman, Propriety and Syntax, SA Architect, March/April 2006, pp 50 – 53,

19

Conservation Architecture of the third landscape

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This is an example of an orthodox approach that negotiates the principles of conservation in a most thoughtful way. Apart from the client’s wish to rehabilitate this building into a farmer’s home for retirement, Kobus du Preez, the architect, took into account the place of the house in the historic context. The key theme is to preserve what is worth preserving and retain those aspects that are in good material and structural condition and reconstruct dilapidated parts following the methods originally used, if they proved to be sound. The front spaces and the façade were in good condition and were therefore preserved. A bathroom and a kitchen were introduced in an appropriate way and at convenient locations. The living area was transferred to the back facing the sun stoep and the garden, to which access was provided by new steps. All these measures are in keeping with the typology of settlers’ houses in this part of the world. Du Preez took care to refurbish the typical Philippolis vermiculite plaster work found behind the new plaster in the stoep and extended it to the rest of the house. Now that the house is returned to a habitable condition, it is beginning to reassume its old role as an important building in the ensemble that constitutes the urban texture of the historic centre.

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Kobus du Preez Argitek | Awarded 1997

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House van Rensburg philipPolis

Before refurbishment 21

3.

3.

1.

Floor plan before refurbishment

N

2.

5.

4.

4.

FLOOR PLAN

3.

FLOOR PLAN

N

Floor plan after refurbishment

1. Front porch 2. Living room 3. Bedroom 4. Kitchen 5. Back porch

N

2.

8.

6.

7.

FLOOR PLAN

1.

11.

13.

3.

4.

5.

9.

10.

12.

14.

15.

N

16.

FLOOR PLAN

17.

18.

20.

19.

21.

1. Front porch 2. Living room 3. Main bedroom 4. W/C 5. Stairs 6. Hall 7. Dining room 8. Bedroom 9. Bathroom 10. Breakfast room 11. Sun porch 12. Kitchen 13. Stairs 14. Outside room 15. Garage 16. Storage room 17. Bedroom 18. Living room 19. Bathroom 20. W/C 21. W/C

23

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Conservation

Window, House Horne, Bloemfontein

Conservation Architecture of the third landscape

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In this case the relation between the terrain and the building is even more intimate than with the previous project. The original architect, Frikkie Horne, probably realized that abstract modernism, because it eschews monolithic expression, has as good a chance of being part of the semi-arid Free State terrain as the farmsteads of the early settlers had. To this end, the house was organized around a series of unassuming courtyards and the principal rooms, taking advantage of the spectacular views beyond.

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Frikkie Horne | The Roodt Partnership | Awarded 2001

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House HORNE Bloemfontein

25

N

OR

O FL

Floor plan

AN

PL

1.

1. Swimming pool 2. Office 3. W/C 4. Reception 5. Conference room 6. Court yard 7. Garage 8. Model building room 9. Storage room 10. Library

FLOOR PLAN

2.

N

2.

2.

2.

3.

10.

4.

5.

3.

8.

7.

9.

South elevation SOUTH ELEVATION

WEST ELEVATION

6.

Conservation | Award-winning buildings of the Free State Architecture of the third landscape

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The house was meticulously restored without any violence to its existing character and detailing. The key to the architect’s approach here is not to change the original plan arrangement but to use creativity to find proper new uses for each space.

The original drawing room thus became the reception room and meeting rooms, bedrooms became architects’ offices with views to the courtyard, the original pottery studio became another architect’s office and the kitchen a library. The main alteration is to the outer edge of the swimming pool which adjoins the veldt. The arrangement modifies the boundary of the pool so that it may be visually experienced as an integral water body in the extended context.

View from North-eastern courtyard

27

EAST ELEVATION

North elevation NORTH ELEVATION

East elevation EAST ELEVATION SOUTH ELEVATION

West elevation

NORTH ELEVATION WEST ELEVATION

North-eastern exterior view

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Conservation

Northern faรงade

29

Main entrance

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Conservation

Conference room

31

2005 House at Klerksvly

1994 House at Klerksvly

1884 House at Klerksvly

Conservation Architecture of the third landscape

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This project is slightly more controversial. The jury decided to give this project a merit award because of the determined effort of the client and the architect to respect historical events such as the negotiation of the surrender of Boer forces that took place in this house and, more importantly for our purposes, the place of the house in the specific setting. Nevertheless, from a restoration and conservation point of view, perhaps because of an enthusiasm for creating what the client imagined as a typical farmer’s house in the area, much of the latter historically significant accretions such as the Cape Dutch gables, the wagon wheel motif on the building and the stucco work done by Italian prisoners of war were removed. All in all, the project did place a high value on the building being an integral part of the landscape.

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MNI Architects | Awarded 2007

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House at Klerksvly qwa qwa national park

33

BEFORE RESTORATION

1.

2.

Floor plan before restoration

AN

3.

L OR P

N

FLO

2.

1. Front veranda 2. Bedroom 3. Lounge 4. Dining room 5. Office 6. Kitchen 7. Back veranda 8. W/C

2.

8.

5.

2.

4.

6.

8.

7.

FLOOR PLAN

N

AFTER RESTORATION

Floor plan after restoration

1.

AN

N

L OR P FLO

5.

2.

3.

2.

9.

2.

4.

6.

8.

N

7.

FLOOR PLAN

1. Front veranda 2. Bedroom 3. Lounge 4. Dining room 5. Guest room 6. Kitchen 7. Back veranda 8. Store 9. Smoking room

Elevations before restoration

Elevations after restoration

East elevation

Architecture of the third landscape

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South elevation

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Conservation

North elevation

West elevation

35

N

FLOOR PLAN

Conservation Architecture of the third landscape

|

This is a conversion, extension, and ultimately a transformation of a stable into a home for a young antique furniture shop owner. The architect succeeds in presenting a contemporary home and yet preserving the original spatial feeling of the stable. To this end, the two existing stone walls are kept, and the extension upwards to gain more height is clearly distinguished from the old stone wall by a rendered wall. Internally, another new stone wall is added to enhance the sense of inhabiting an older structure without in any way camouflaging it with the old.

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The Roodt Partnership | Awarded 2005

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House pienaar bloemfontein

Locality plan, House Pienaar, Bloemfontein

37

A

1. Guest parking 2. Entrance 3. Entrance hall 4. Work room 5. Living room 6. Dining room 7. Kitchen 8. Wash up 9. Larder 10. Wine tasting area 11. Guest room 12. Barbecue 13. Pool

13.

12.

Ground floor plan

N

FLOOR PLAN

7.

6.

8.

9.

5.

10.

4.

11.

3.

A

2.

1.

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

A

N

N

FLOOR PLAN

14.

15.

16.

A

First floor plan

14. Bedroom 15. Dressing room 16. Bathroom

N

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

The project is exemplary in showing how a minor architecture of the past can be re-used sensitively and extended with clarity and conviction.

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Conservation

Wherever possible old timber trusses are re-used and any new structure requiring large spans is of composite construction using steel and timber. The architect has painstakingly ensured that the new structure has a certain resonance of the old, even if it is necessary to use secondary steel battens on the large timber sections of the new trusses.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

The memory of the stable is preserved further by covering the old water trough with steel grating and, where it extends outwards covering it with glass. At this point a square glass box animates the exterior and acts as a contemporary interpretation of a bay window in the workroom.

|

A similar but slightly larger canopy, an elder sister as it were of the entrance, gives access to the terrace on the north and shades the giant glass sliding door. Such new features as sliding door and canopy are not only functional but are in keeping with the non-domestic nature of the original and eschew attempts to make it sweet and homely, the accent of the architect being on the sublime rather than on the picturesque.

Architecture of the third landscape

The open plan configuration on both the ground floor and as the upper floor, accessed by a series of cantilevered steps, is elegant. The served spaces of work, living, dining, kitchen on the ground floor and the master bedroom on the first floor have a north orientation to the sun and view, and the servant spaces of wine cellar, laundry, scullery and bathrooms are at the rear to the south. The only exception is the guest bedroom which has an east orientation. The living area flows out onto a terrace. Entry on the south is animated by a canopy supported by hollow steel sections that also act as rainwater down pipes. The canopy and the new roof transform the old shed into a lively composition.

SECTION A-A

East elevation EAST ELEVATION

39

North-eastern exterior view

41

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Conservation

Section A-A SECTION A-A

EAST ELEVATION

Living room

View to mezzanine

43

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Conservation

Refurbished water trough

Passage

45

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Conservation

Another observation before commenting on the project is necessary. We all admire the works of Carlo Scarpa in Castel Vecchio in Verona. However, conservation experts today feel that nearly all of Scarpa’s restructuring of old buildings has been done illegally and presented as fait accomplis for retrospective approval. With today’s conservation vigilance on the part of historians, the architectural profession at large and indeed the concerned public, such manipulations, however wellintentioned and for the cause of good architecture, are impossible.

Conservation | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

We live in a world of universal conservation charters, guidance by such organizations as ICOMOS and, of course, local legislation concerned with old buildings. These instruments, however well-conceived, can acquire the status of ideals for every conceivable historic architecture while, becoming in practice, ideals for no building. We all know that loopholes in legislation concerning conservation are often exploited resulting in what is known as “façadism” and “gutting and stuffing”.

Both involve propping up the façade, removing everything inside and increasing the number of floors, all of which end up producing unsatisfactory internal volumes with windows at the most incongruous levels. Universal dictats therefore do not work. In addition to these questionable practices the legislation can place unrealistic demands on an old building. There is therefore no alternative to relying on the sensibility of the architect and a willingness on the part of local authorities to adapt the legislation to suit the building as opposed to fitting the building to rigidly prescriptive rules and regulations. Happily this seems to be the path energetically followed in this project.

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Bannie Britz Argitek & Stedelike Ontwerper | Chrystal van Beukering | Awarded 2007

Architecture of the third landscape

refurbishment of Main Building University of the Free State, Bloemfontein

47

Foyer

N

LA

P OR

FLO N

Conservation | Award-winning buildings of the Free State |

To achieve all this, the building had to be internally modified in a drastic way but with a degree of circumspection in order not to disturb its lofty spatial qualities. To this effect original floor levels are maintained. At the same time the design eschews a blind reverence to the building just because it is old and accepts that, even in the past, more often than not, architects produced clumsy solutions. An example of this is the absence of a central stair for a symmetrical building. In many other respects the original is a grand building but having stairs only at its ends affected legibility and increased cross currents of circulation. So the architect boldly introduces an elegant, dignified central stair connecting ground and first floor. The link stair between first and second floor is on the opposite side, less grand than the other, but using the same constructional syntax, a classical way of achieving unity. This stair links the gazebo-like element on the roof, conceived by the original architect as a flourish as it were, in the external composition. The outcome of these delicate interventions is not only an efficient vertical circulation but also a visual tying together of disparate parts of the building into a cohesive whole. The language of the stair and other insertions do not in any way kow-tow to the original language of the building but are uncompromisingly contemporary and happy to cohabit with key features of the old building. There are many tactical decisions in this project that serve to integrate the old and new and widely dispersed and spatially varied parts of this project. The insertion of the oculus on the vaulted crossing of the major and minor axis on the roof at first floor level and a circular hole on the floor are illustrative examples. The toughened glass floor of the hole arouses one’s curiosity about other interventions in this building. The interior architecture goes some way towards the demands of what Johani Pallasma called haptic architecture, an architecture that engages the sense of touch. To this end the architect has consciously paid attention to details and choice of furniture. Good examples are the interior of the Rector’s office, the meeting room and the threshold between offices for the administrators and the officials. The urge to touch and feel the materials used in these areas is considerable. Of course the tactile and the visual should work together, which they do to a large extent. The architect even took trouble to select and place new works of art at appropriate places and, in cases where personnel had their own art works, he participated in suggesting appropriate places for display.

Architecture of the third landscape

In this instance the architect has followed the sensible path of respecting aspects of the building that were valued not just by architects but also by the academics and alumni who have an affectionate memory of the building. The presence of its exterior as the most important building on the campus is preserved, and so are the dignified internal volumes and the general disposition of spaces in plan and section. But the stuffy, gloomy, cellular layout of the original building was not conducive to the 21st century management of a thriving educational institution. Having researched into contemporary trends in workplace design the architect chose the emergent model known simply as “office club”, outlining the friendly ethos needed for the effective functioning of a university’s higher management. While the late 20th century trend of open plan offices suit what is known as the nomadic worker of corporate businesses, it is inappropriate for an educational institution with highly valued traditions. This scheme therefore opts for an intelligent combination of elegantly detailed and furnished individual offices for the senior personnel and open plan for staff who work as effective intermediaries between the academic community and management.

49

Ground floor plan

Doors

F N

N

LA

RP

O LO

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

But these are minor quibbles in a project of exceptional merit. Its outlook on conservation is refreshingly radical as well as practical and exemplifies what the Indian spiritual and political philosopher, Aurobindo Gosh, tellingly called conservation through reconstruction.

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Inevitably there are some minor criticisms. The outsized air-conditioning duct clad in a visually unsatisfactory material is an intrusion in the lofty ground floor volume. Apparently the system is also noisy. As a result, even in the relatively small conference room, sound amplification is needed during meetings. Another aspect about which one feels a certain ambivalence is the first floor triangular-headed openings on the first floor load bearing walls. Presumably the architect felt that if openings are to be made, why should they be rectilinear? At least the triangular form shows the natural tendency of masonry to support itself when openings are made. These forms nevertheless give a hint of mannerism in an otherwise impeccable project.

Architecture of the third landscape

There is a beautifully laid out private garden at the back for the personnel. It has a special place for reflection for the Rector which faces a miniature labyrinth. Perhaps the architect intended to convey that managing a university is like negotiating a complex labyrinth, with the reassurance that ultimately there are solutions!

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Conservation

Section

Labarith

51

Staircase

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Conservation

Hall

53

CONTENTS

Buildings in the city and the university

Introduction

55

Firmitas Building, Bloemfontein Jan Ras Architects’ Group cc

56

Student Centre, Bloemfontein The Roodt Partnereship

64

Buildings in the city and the university | Award-winning buildings of the Free State |

ewis Mumford, in his book City in History, argued that the university is one of the repositories of culture and therefore it stands to reason that it too should foster within its limits the notion of urbanity. This has been the case with old universities, ranging from the oldest in Italy such as the University of Bologna or the Free University of Urbino, Oxbridge in Britain and University of Virginia in America built by Thomas Jefferson. But, in each case, the character of the university is closely related to that of its host town. Bloemfontein is no exception. The reader will be surprised to note that there are only two award winning buildings in this section related to urban settings, although Bannie Britz’s house in the next subsection does engage in a direct way with a sense of urbanity. Could it be that a place like Bloemfontein argues for a curious kind of urbanity without cities? This may explain why projects here are not overtly about making urban gestures but are much more modest and highly selective in reserving such gestures to certain unique circumstances.

This is the case with the student centre at the University of the Free State does. Nevertheless, the two buildings included in this section raise issues that are related to the nature of our small city.

Architecture of the third landscape

L

Buildings in the city and the university

55

Buildings in the city and the university Architecture of the third landscape

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It is not easy to conceive a quality office building for a speculative developer. Here factors such as the need for an iconic building which could help branding and the direct contact with potential users, possible in an office project for a corporate client, are missing. Furthermore, financial stringencies are that much more severe in developer-led projects of this kind. The Firmitas project had to face the additional difficulty of being located at the edge of the historic city of Bloemfontein, between two traffic arteries and with no desirable outlook whatsoever. The bulk of the accommodation needed is another problem.

The recourse of Jan Ras, the architect, would appear to be to look to the historic fabric of Bloemfontein, which sensibly conceives large buildings as though they are composed of smaller elements.

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Jan Ras Architects’ Group cc | Awarded 1997

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

firmitas building Bloemfontein

Western façade, Firmitas Building, Bloemfontein 57

6. 6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

1. Stair 2. Reception 3. W/C 4. Strongroom 5. Open plan offices 6. Office 7. Courtyard

6.

6.

6.

7.

Ground floor plan

N

4.

FLOOR PLAN

3.

1.

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

2.

3.

4.

7.

5.

South-western exterior view

First floor plan

N

FLOOR PLAN

6.

6.

Second floor plan

6. 6.

6.

6.

6.

FLOOR PLAN

N

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

6.

4.

4.

3.

1.

6.

6.

1.

2.

3.

3.

6.

6.

6.

2.

6.

3.

4.

5.

Articulation on the facade

Architecture of the third landscape

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5.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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4.

5.

Buildings in the city and the university

5.

59

Drum

West elevation

EAST ELEVATION

Architecture of the third landscape

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In the Fimitas project the architect organizes the building around three courts or quadrangles converted into courtyards by walling in the fourth side. In doing so he resolves a number of issues: A) the near peripheral development enables him to keep the building height as low as possible. B) as the views out are insignificant and in any case facing a noisy thoroughfare, where possible the courtyards enable him to create an inner world of peace and quiet for the office workers. One other fresh line of thought the architect brings to bear is a positive outlook on even this context of low-grade urban tissue. The principle followed by Ras is that if the context is nonexistent, should we not ensure that the new building has enough interest in it to form a new context to which subsequent developments in the area could respond? The courtyards and the horizontality of emphasis (a tried and tested way of paying homage to land) try to do exactly that and seems to be valid even on a site facing indifferent traffic arteries. One other step in the direction of creating intrinsic interest in the new building is to punctuate the predominant horizontality with projecting elements, a classical way of modulating scale.

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NORTH ELEVATION

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

North elevation

Buildings in the city and the university

EAST ELEVATION

Northern faรงade

61

Southern faรงade

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Buildings in the city and the university

Articulation of distinctive elements on the faรงade

63

Buildings in the city and the university

Student centre, University of the Free State Bloemfontein The Roodt Partnership | Awarded 2005

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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All over the world, university campuses face a number of problems. These include clarity of internal movement systems, integration of town and gown, and the creation of a sense of urbanity in programmes, layout and building design. The issue of clarity in movement systems is relevant to the University of the Free State, and is being addressed. The problem of integration of the city and the university is a difficult one in our security conscious times. The Student Centre to some extent deals with this by ensuring surveillance by the constant presence of interacting users. Most importantly, however, it addresses the issue of urbanity and takes the view that every building is a fragment of the extended context of the city.

Architecture of the third landscape

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The project is an inhabited bridge containing restaurants, commercial facilities, conference rooms at ground floor and student centre offices on the top floor. This bridge over DF Malherbe Drive connects the university library with the rest of the campus. Here the landscape concerns are paramount. The bridge is conceived as the mediator between the urbanised part of the campus and the less urbanised part of the sports fields. Heidegger’s phenomenological narrative on the bridge, suggesting that in terms of place making the embankments are much more significant than the structurally important middle, is relevant here. The embankment on the university end is exceptionally well-handled and is constantly inhabited.

The other end, with the library and an existing amphithaetre, is not so successful but the potential for exploring the reconfiguration of this side exists.

OR

FLO

N

PLA

N

Locality plan, UFS Sudent Centre, Bloemfontein 65

OR

Ground floor plan

N

FLO

N

PLA

1. Media centre 2. Commercial 3. Information centre 4. Food outlet 5. Cafeteria 6. RSFM 7. Electrical services

2.

2.

1.

2. 2.

3.

2.

4.

6.

4.

4. 4. 4.

2.

2.

2.

2.

2.

2.

7.

2.

2.

2.

7.

2.

2.

7.

5.

2.

2.

2.

2.

2.

6.

6.

6.

2.

2. 2. 2.

2.

2.

2.

N

2. 2.

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

AN

First floor plan

N

2.

R PL LOO

F

1.

1.

2.

N

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

2.

4.

6.

3.

5. 7.

2.

1. Double volume 2. Offices 3. Committee room 4. Waiting area 5. Foyer 6. Seminar room 7. Lift

The architect here has created a little fragment of the city with intertwining and overlapping functions. The language is a modern one with a single mono-pitch roof for the structure across the road and a series of distinct mono-pitches for accommodation perpendicular to it. As in many lively districts of cities, varying public realms of streets, squares and forecourts are intricately knitted together.

In order to counter the amorphous structure of the existing university layout, the architect has set up parallel walls and beams, a continuation of the theme of the bridge, and uses them as a backbone to attach varying functions. This structure is extruded outwards to public open spaces, again providing pleasant, sheltered corners for students to congregate in groups of different sizes.

Aerial view

Buildings in the city and the university Architecture of the third landscape

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The project emphatically demonstrates how architecture can enable human interaction in a flexible way without regimenting it.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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The inhabited bridge has its illustrious urban pedigree in Ponte Vecchio in Florence. To have executed a successful one over a non-descript road is an achievement. Apart from Bernard Tschumi’s narratives for such bridges, and Hans Scharoun’s proposal of a bridge for the foyer of his Casall’s theatre, there have been many successful modern precedents for this kind of building, especially for non-commercial uses.

67

Northern exterior view

Northern facade

North elevation NORTH ELEVATION

NORTH ELEVATION

SOUTH ELEVATION Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Buildings in the city and the university

Southern exterior view

South elevation 69

Western entrance

West elevation WEST ELEVATION

EAST ELEVATION

EAST ELEVATION Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Buildings in the city and the university

Parallel walls

WEST ELEVATION

East elevation 71

Students on the square

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Buildings in the city and the university

Left: Louvered walkway Right: Thakaneng Bridge

73

CONTENTS

Houses and house extensions

Introduction

75

House Britz, Bloemfontein Bannie Britz Argitek & Stedelike Ontwerper

76

House Smit, Bloemfontein SM!T Architects

82

House Enkalwani, Bloemfontein SM!T Architects | Henry Pretorius

90

House Uys, Bloemfontein SM!T Architects

98

House Relling, Bloemfontein Hennie Lambrechts Argitekte

104

House Rosmarin, Clarens Michael Scholes and Associate Architect

108

Vaal Estate Studio, Sasolburg Elphick Proome Architects

116

Houses and house extensions | Award-winning buildings of the Free State Architecture of the third landscape

t is interesting to note that residential projects dominate the awards. There may be a number of reasons for this. Quite simply, there may well be more residential work undertaken in the Free State than any other type which is reflected in the number of awards. Much more speculatively though, could it be that larger works are done by architects from outside the Free State who do not have the same affinity to the setting which, we have suggested, has had a tellingly formative influence on the nature of our award winning buildings? Perhaps this is a generalization, as the Kimberley Parliament1, which is part of the award scheme of the Free State but not covered in this book, is by an outside architect and still intimately wedded to its site characteristics. Nevertheless, this idea of psychological connectedness to the terrain may not be as far-fetched as it may first seem. If one looks closely at the residential work and a few of the others covered in this monograph their connectedness to the socio-cultural and historical landscape of the Free State outlined in the introduction becomes clear. As a result one will certainly notice that each of these works are unique to this province and one will be hard pushed to find parallels for them elsewhere. On the other hand building types such as institutional buildings may not be so territorially bound.

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I

Houses and House extensions

1 Although it was assessed by the Free State panel since there is an extensive coverage of this building (in Building of an African Icon, the

Northern Cape Provincial Legislature Complex, Eds. Malan. C. McInernerney. P. MPTS Architectural Library, Johannesburg, 2003, see in

particular, P. G. Raman, Civic Buildings in the Developing World, The Evolution of a Typology, pp 55 – 62) this building is

not covered here. Likewise the Red House in Parys, assessed by the Gauteng awards panel of which Raman was a member

has a connection to the Free State territory of Parys and is not included. We mention this project elsewhere in this book but it is fully covered in

SA Architect, Sept - Oct - 2006 pp 15-16

75

Britz confronts this in an explicit manner and does not hide the new away in an apologetic way. Here the old and new, with its well-conceived forecourt, become an urban ensemble, leaving the rear garden of the old house intact and converting the residual space behind the new addition into an intimate garden for the smaller house. Site planning is more than a concern with functional aspects such as access roads, car parking and planting. It is very much a compositional matter. The circular forecourt adjusts itself to the projecting entrance of the existing building, and the receding entrance to the new house becomes a counter-form of these steps.

Planting, both existing and new, go beyond being manicuring devices and the angular disposition of the road is more than a practical matter. Both aid the landscape composition, seen here in spatial terms in a substantial way. Likewise, the meticulously composed rear garden of the new house derives its groundscape (this newly coined word is the only one that can describe the combined quality of landscape and floorscape) from the extrapolated pattern of the front court and the east west cross walls of the interior of the house. The transverse east-west footpath in this garden is a resonance of the circular geometry of the quadrangle.

N

Houses and house extensions | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

This tiny project encapsulates an amazing array of design principles. At an urban design level it advances profound ideas on densification of suburbs, which has application beyond Bloemfontein. The project suggests the bold alternative of a frontal addition to the commonplace pan-handle-division, since the latter invariably ends up promoting sub-standard urban design.

Furthermore, the placing of the new on the street edge poses the challenges of relating the old and new in multi-dimensional ways, which is the essence of any evolving city.

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Bannie Britz Argitek & Stedelike Ontwerper | Awarded 1999

Architecture of the third landscape

house britz Bloemfontein

FLOOR PLAN

Site plan, House Britz, Bloemfontein 77

1. Stoep 2. Dining 3. Lounge 4. Loft above 5. Garage 6. Guest room 7. Bedroom 8. Court 9. Workroom

9.

Ground floor plan

N

FLOOR PLAN

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

8.

Articulation on the facade

7.

Uniquely, the screen wall provides an example of what Colin Rowe identified as two types of transparency, namely literal, one that enables us to see through, and phenomenal, the one that arouses our curiosity about what is lurking. The living room is intimacy epitomised. Although the furnishing is as luxurious as can be, the space gathers and does not disperse and as one sits down, conversation becomes natural and unforced. This is what good home-making is all about.

From the living room we go down a few steps to the dining room. This room is also connected to the other end of the extended entrance hall, allowing for discrete movement of services from the kitchen without traversing the dining or living area. Ideas about good housekeeping like this are evident everywhere.

Another example of this is the location of the maid’s room off a patio from the dining room fused to the well-laid out garden and not off an insalubrious nook one is used to in many middle class South African houses. The step down to the dining room facilitates a study over it in the mezzanine and creates an intimate scale by the lowered height. It accurately controls the double height in the living room beyond which could have become too monumental and impersonal.

Houses and house extensions | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

On entering the modest lobby through an eccentrically pivoted door adorned with a little sculpture by a local artist, one gets a glimpse of the living room through a honeycomb brick screen wall of exacting precision, but the pull is in the lateral direction towards the service areas such as the kitchen on the west and bedrooms on the east. Hence the emphasis is on the minor axis, a classical way of softening the severity of the major axis. At the same time there is a tension between the two as our curiosity about the living room gets the better of us and we peel off in an involuntary way towards it. The vaulted roof assists that move.

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From the low-walled threshold space between the forecourt and entrance hall, from there to every room in the interior, extravagance of any kind is strenuously avoided. And yet, the feeling is not a minimalism of stinginess, nor that of the fetishistic kind, but one of near asceticism, which is life-enhancing and intelligent. Any saving made on efficient floor planning is sensibly spent on the lofty volumes of the rooms without sacrificing intimacy. The tautness in plan and section and key space-saving elements such as the samba stairs are object lessons in value-generating circumspection and parsimony.

Architecture of the third landscape

Southern exterior view

79

Interiors

Drawings by architect

| Architecture of the third landscape

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The construction is load-bearing brickwork roofed over by barrel vaulted corrugated steel sheets with the three volumes of living, dining and study; the maid’s room, kitchen and garage and the bedroom wing all have distinct external expression, but are visually fused in an effortless way. The barrel vault in its external appearance does not kowtow to the language of the existing house but relates to it by having its own personality. It is, however, well-mannered to the old in terms of site planning, landscape and has a generally humbler demeanour allowing the old to be the major event. Altogether this is a charming little house. It is rare for a single project, let alone such a small one, to encapsulate a variety of architectural conceptions ranging from urban design, landscape, minimalist planning and expression, spatial flow, control of spatial impact, constructional efficacy and designing new buildings in old contexts.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

Thanks to the fusion of the sharable spaces, namely the living and dining rooms, the patio, the garden, the kitchen and the study in the mezzanine, using the route and the stair as visual glue, the house presents a maximum feeling of spaciousness with a minimum of materials expended. In many ways reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s conceptions, there are some exact calibrations here that enable a small house to feel generous and dignified. Along the eastern end are the two bedrooms with the stair to the mezzanine and the guest bathroom tucked in but without compromising the aesthetics of the plan.

Houses and house extensions

Perspective drawing

81

Houses and house extensions Architecture of the third landscape

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The site of this project at the end of a cul-de-sac in the desirable suburb of Waverley in Bloemfontein is out on a limb. With a steeply ascending slope from east to west, this is a difficult and almost, from a designer’s point of view, a frightening one.

It takes courage to tackle such a site. It requires an acute reading of the site as characterized by ambiguity, openness and indeterminacy. Lacking in frontality, its identity as a suburban site is largely dissolved and extreme creativity is needed to realize that this provides the architect an opportunity for a new line of attack. The resulting disorientation of the site, which perhaps is a blessing in disguise, makes it difficult to have the ubiquitous suburban fronts and backs. This is decidedly an advantage and which, as Pretorius puts it in the Smit monograph (Layered Pragmatism; Op.cit.:17), enables the design to bypass suburbia and address the city and landscape beyond on the north and protect the structure from the cold on the south with service accommodation. Such a conception is not possible in other sites with conventional frontages. Thus this liminal site and the response of the architects deemphasize or deliberately ignore accepted niceties of the semiprivate front garden and the private back garden and pay singular attention to the broader concept of architecture and urbanism as allegoric landscape.

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SM!T Architects | Awarded 2003

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House smit Bloemfontein

Eastern exterior view, House Smit, Bloemfontein 83

7.

Studio / guest room

7.

Ground floor plan

First floor plan

N

N

FLOOR PLAN

5.

3.

6.

4.

FLOOR PLAN

12.

Second floor plan

N

2.

FLOOR PLAN

6.

8.

9.

10.

10.

11.

1.

1. Entrance 2. Sitting / dining 3. Kitchen 4. Scullery 5. Living 6. Bathroom

6. Bathroom 8. Main bedroom 9. Dressing room 10. Children’s cubicles 11. Study 12. Steel deck

Houses and house extensions | Award-winning buildings of the Free State Architecture of the third landscape

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In this conception each major space is conceived as a platform, an interior landscape datum, tied together by the service spaces separated by a wall and enclosed by a curtain wall that blurs the distinction between indoors and outdoors. It is almost possible to invoke anthropology here as the composition is governed by a number of value-laden belief systems. The notions of service and served spaces and the use of a separating wall as generator, the promenade architecturale starting from entry to the site, arrival at the studio, ascending the steps to the piano nobile, the turn of access to arrive at the living room, going up a cascading stair to the platform with bedrooms and eventually ending up at the sundowner terrace on the west are all rituals aimed at breaking the taboo about how one places houses in suburbia. The house embraces Lyotard’s view that modernity, since it eschews conventional notions of beauty and mimesis of any kind, is, in essence sublime.

Entrance stair case

85

North-eastern exterior view

Houses and house extensions | Award-winning buildings of the Free State |

North elevation

Architecture of the third landscape

Being unlike any other house in expression, it elicits light-hearted comments on how it is like a fish tank or a factory but this is the occupational hazard architects face when confronting the unfamiliar and, to their credit, the Smits remain unabashed by such reactions. Being on a tectonic mode of its own, the Smit house defies any classification as belonging to any particular genre of houses. It embraces the paradox of the union of opposites. It combines the colonial past and the technological present. The sundowner terrace has its origins in the settler’s stoep but the northern wall is of today, a passive solar device, enabling the presentation of the found landscape of existing trees, rocks and indigenous plants, edited to some extent by the architects but not manicured.

87

View from kitchen window

View to second floor

Section

2.

7.

Sitting / dining

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

This is magical realism as distinct from pure fantasy because it sets out to meet the needs of the couple with two young children and a dog in the most frugal of ways. Nevertheless, the fictional elements of the value laden beliefs of promenade, wall as a generator and service and served spaces are combined with practical matters to make a home.

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12.

Houses and house extensions

2. Sitting / dining 7. Studio / guest room 12. Steel deck

89

N

FLOOR PLAN

Site plan, House Enkalweni, Bloemfontein

Houses and house extensions Architecture of the third landscape

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This house is a geometrically rigorous and airy variation on the Smit House. It is designed to obtain views of the distant mountains and a northern exposure to winter sun. If the Smit House embraced the idea of enfronting, as opposed to the suburban idea of frontality, this house seems to argue a case for enfronting as well as frontality. The main northern faรงade is visible from some distance but the approach to the site from the east is turned southwards by the circumflected service room and stair at the southeast corner, with entry to the building at the piano nobile from the south, orchestrating circulation as a promenade, partially outdoors and partially indoors.

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SM!T Architects | Henry Pretorius | Awarded 2007

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House EnkalwEni Bloemfontein

91

12

Ground floor plan

N

FLOOR PLAN

First floor plan

N

FLOOR PLAN

1. Entrance void 2. Living/dining room 3. Kitchen 4. Scullery

12

5. Bathroom 6. Study 7. Viewing balcony 8. Bedroom 9. Bridge 10. Courtyard 11. Dressing room 12. Pool

11

FLOOR PLAN

12. Garage 13. Wine cellar

Houses and house extensions | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

N

|

Basement plan

Architecture of the third landscape

The house is a unique blend of architectural composition, landscape and practical comfort. It responds lyrically to the landscape of distant mountains, wide horizons and the flat foreground of the veldt. It does so without in any way compromising the building’s tectonic integrity. Therefore, in the companion Smit monograph (Layered Pragmatism; Op.cit.:17), this author called the building a parallel landscape and likened it to the painting of Cross and Cathedral in the Mountain by Caspar David Friedrich (1812). The image of the house is certainly fleeting but becomes memorable in the long run.

93

North-eastern exterior view

North elevation

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Houses and house extensions

Western facade

Section

95

South-eastern exterior view

Living room Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Houses and house extensions

Southern faรงade

97

Houses and house extensions Architecture of the third landscape

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This house is probably the nearest one would get to a building that is similar to a farmstead set in the Free State veldt. If there is to be an indigenous Free State contemporary architecture it surely has to be one which pursues the overarching need to discover and develop its relation to the surrounding nature. This house comes close to doing just that. On the northern side it respects the dominant horizontality of the veldt, and indeed the house seems to grow naturally out of the ground whereas on the southern side, which is the access side, there is more of a gesture towards the city.

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SM!T Architects | Awarded 2007

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House UYS Bloemfontein

South-western exterior view, House Uys, Bloemfontein 99

Southern exterior view

Northern faรงade

Houses and house extensions | Award-winning buildings of the Free State | Architecture of the third landscape

A degree of urbanity is signaled by the entry portal but once one has entered the interior we are, for all intents and purposes, in the wilderness, and the interior blends with the pristine bushland where even the pool becomes a water body in it. ‘Space, not matter is important’ argued Frank Lloyd Wright. This is true of the farm buildings of the Free State and also of House Uys. By fusing the internal and external space, House Uys becomes much more dominant than the materiality of the building. Space is the content and as such it is the protagonist rather than the container. Having discovered certain relationships of sorts between architecture and the surrounding terrain in House Smit and House Enkalwani, it would have been easy for the architects to be formulaic, but they avoided repetition and made a building that is exactly right for this site.

101

12.

7.

Ground floor plan

N

FLOOR PLAN

6.

6.

9.

8.

2.

13.

8.

1.

4.

3.

10.

5.

1. Entrance gallery 2. Living room 3. Kitchen 4. Scullery 5. Dining room 6. Bedroom 7. Master bedroom 8. Bathroom 9. TV room 10. Storage 11. Garage 12. Pool 13. Outside court with shower

11.

14. Study 15. Studio

14.

First floor plan

N

FLOOR PLAN

15.

15.

Section

11.

3.

2.

Houses and house extensions | Architecture of the third landscape

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The architects have settled on a predominantly single storey house with an emphasis on horizontality. While the tried and tested organizational principles of served and service spaces, the generating wall and the promenade, are used, they are adapted to this particular site, with no indication of imitating the other two houses. The architects seem to demonstrate in a convincing way the Emersonian dictum ‘Insist on yourself, never imitate’. This spirit seemed to have infected the client too and astonishingly the young couple have avoided the usual habit of South African clients to wall themselves in and allowed the house to be a modest structure in the expansive terrain.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

Eastern exterior view

North elevation

103

Architecture of the third landscape

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Do we not know that pools in houses tend to be those clinical water bodies, neither belonging to the landscape, nor to architecture but always having an alien presence in relation to both, out on a limb as it were? One of the few of the modern movement houses that attempts to include the pool as part of the architectural and landscape composition is Le Corbusier’s Villa Sarahbhai in Ahmadabad, India. The task of Lambrechts is even more complicated. The pool was already there, away from the house which has reasonable character. It called for considerable determination on the part of the architect to persuade the client to move the pool nearer to the house, modify the interfacing elements of the building and the garden beyond so that all three, namely architecture, water and the landscape may be fused into a single entity. The momentum generated by this process caught the imagination of Mrs. Relling and the landscape continues to be enriched by her.

Houses and house extensions

Bloemfontein has the historic tradition of caring for the smallest of the small and of having the time and inclination to do so. Respecting this record, the Free State chapter of the South African Institute of Architects always makes a point of giving awards to carefully executed small projects. One of these is the modification and swimming pool extension to House Relling

by Hennie Lambrechts.

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Hennie Lambrechts Argitekte | Awarded 2007

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House Relling Bloemfontein

EAST ELEVATIO

Section, showing North elevation, House Relling, Bloemfontein

NORTH ELEVATION

105

R OO

AN

PL

FL

Floor Plan

N

N

N

OR

O FL

Balcony Plan

FLOOR PLAN

FLOOR FLOOR PLANPLAN N

AN

PL

N

N

N

BALCONY PLAN

BALCONY BALCONY PLANPLAN N

Sun Roof

SUN ROOF ROOF SUN SUN ROOF

Architecture of the third landscape

North-western vista over pool

107

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Houses and house extensions

Houses and house extensions Architecture of the third landscape

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This project succeeds in several ways. It demonstrates how one can add contemporary architecture to a historic context such as the town of Clarens with its spectacular landscape setting. Utter simplicity in planning, the use of a constructional system that alludes to local tradition without aping it and a close and continuous interaction with the client seem to be the clues for its success.

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Michael Scholes and Associate Architect | Awarded 2005

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House rosmarin clarens

Living room, House Rosmarin, Clarens 109

B

AN

L RP

OO

FL

Ground floor plan

7.

3.

2.

6.

1.

N

A

5.

4.

B

N

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

Southern faรงade

EAST ELEVATION

NORTH ELEVATION

South Elevation

WEST ELEVATION

SOUTH ELEVATION

A

1. Living area 2. Kitchen 3. Pantry 4. Store 5. Entrance 6. Stoep 7. Garage

B

10.

A

B

N

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

The plan is simply a string of rooms, all rigorously facing north to exploit the views and the sun, connected by a corridor on the south protecting the habitable rooms from the cold and providing privacy from the public footpath on that side. The stair is of a trapezoidal configuration in order to deal with the quirky shape of the site, but at ground level it has the effect of invitingly opening up as entrance. It is becoming increasingly rare in contemporary architecture to use double height of spaces in telling ways. Nearly always they end up being clichĂŠs, voids to avoid, as it were. Here the only double height space is the living area. Animated by the bridge on the first floor and a giant window, the double volume adds dignity to the living room. The severe cost constraints have proved to be a blessing in disguise and have enabled the architect to use the minimalist conception, not as aesthetics, but as a way of providing value for money for the client and as a life-enhancing principle.

B

North-western exterior view A

A

B

N

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

Houses and house extensions

A

|

9.

N

8.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

First floor plan

8.

|

8.

OO

FL

8. Bedroom 9. Hall 10. Bridge

Architecture of the third landscape

AN

L RP

North Elevation

EAST ELEVATION

NORTH ELEVATION

111

South-western exterior view

EAST ELEVATION

West Elevation

NORTH ELEVATION

East Elevation

WEST ELEVATION

SOUTH ELEVATION

EAST ELEVATION

NORTH ELEVA

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

North-eastern exterior view

113

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Houses and house extensions

Interior view of bridge

Section A-A

SECTION B-B

SECTION A-A

Houses and house extensions | Architecture of the third landscape

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House Rosmarin also succeeds in demonstrating that polarised views of either modern architecture or an imagined traditional one are futile. It is possible to fuse authentic tradition with modern principles such as plan aesthetics, elegant internal circulation, clear structure and appropriate use of materials and textures. The project takes its place in Clarens as an urban barn at the edge of the town.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

The project indirectly suggests that, if indeed one has a second home under the present socio-economic conditions of South Africa, it should be a modest one.

Section B-B

SECTION B-B

SECTION A-A

115

Perhaps more than any other in this publication this project exemplifies the view of Lyotard that Modernism’s concern is with the sublime, as it eschews mimesis, a conventional conception of beauty and evokes many enlightened aspects of the modernist agenda. Like Richard Serra’s sculptures it is a maximal minimalist work, in that it is what is often called weighty minimalism. The plan thus is minimal but the structure is robust and the space, materiality and light are used in a complex and sophisticated combination. Of course there are inevitable differences between this project and Serra’s pieces. As an inhabited sculpture it cannot possibly accept Serra’s obsession with precariousness in location and relation between component parts as an aesthetic quality. Although such an approach would have pushed it further towards sublimity, a project intended for habitation cannot take such liberties. It also moves away from Serra’s myth of being about the particularity of location and accepts, more profoundly and allegorically, the situationist point of view advanced by Sartre1 and Debord2. The aim of situationism was to use artistic and practical activity to shape situations so as to release spontaneity and creativity that would lead to new and radical ways of conducting everyday life. In the Vaal studio, the architect, the enlightened client and the builder shaped the ordinary requirement of a weekend accommodation for guests by thinking of new ways of organizing space and human habitation. One other situationist viewpoint which this project alludes to is that society today is very much a society of spectacles and as such it is more interested in the accumulation of images rather than commodities. The studio thus supplies an image of a possible way of living, as opposed to stopping at providing a commodifiable residence.

1 2

Houses and house extensions | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

This is an open-plan guest studio house on the estate of an art collector built onto an existing garage. It contains a bedsitting workspace with a kitchen and subsidiary spaces of bathroom, store and security staff accommodation. It is surprising how a small project like this embraces so many themes of modernism in architecture. In fact it goes further, articulating much of the radical preoccupations of contemporary art which 20th century architecture promised but never fully delivered.

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Elphick Proome Architects | Awarded 2007

Architecture of the third landscape

Vaal Estate Studio sasolburg

Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness, Tr. Barnes, H, Methuen, London, 1957 See Debord, G, Society of the Spectacle, Black and Red, Detroit, 1977

117

SHOWER COURT

1.

4.

C

N

Northern faรงade

STUDIO

TIMBER DECK

STORE 1

STORE 2 SECURITY

8.

KITCHENETTE

5.

12.

BATHROOM

7.

HATCH

6.

B

N

C

13.

B

FLOOR PLAN

B

EXISTING GARAGE

B

FLOOR PLAN

A

11.

BATHROOM

A

9.

TIMBER DECK

COURTYARD

3.

A

10.

2.

A

Floor Plan

FLOO

KITCHEN

C

1. Existing garage 2. Timber deck 3. Studio 4. Bathroom 5. Kitchenette 6. Store 1 7. Store 2 8. Security 9. Bathroom 10. Kitchen 11. Shower court 12. Timber deck 13. Hatch

N

R PLA

N

SOUTH ELEVATION

| Award-winning buildings of the Free State | Architecture of the third landscape

EAST ELEVATION Like Serra’s works, the project also owes a debt to constructivism. The formal elements are factory made. The building form arises from a scrutiny of programme, the wish to animate space with a dynamic juxtaposition of line, structure and unexpected sources, and quality of natural light. The building process itself is an integral part of the art work and it is interesting that the builder was the representative of the architect when the adjudicators for an award visited the project.

Constructivism emphasized the process of building or fabricating a work as opposed to modeling or sculpting it and with it went certain aesthetic attributes. Architecture naturally emphasizes these aspects, and this project demonstrates that engagement with the tellingly visual attributes of constructivism can lead to fresh conceptions. The building is entirely made of steel rusted naturally and sealed to prevent further deterioration, a more economical way of achieving the patinated effect of core-ten steel. The project relishes the reality of the material at hand, and the construction process transcends the idea of simple means becoming substantial ends, thereby developing a culture of materiality. There is a kind of transparency where methods and materials are openly displayed. The work done here is a model in demonstrating that a modern industrialized WEST ELEVATION process can be a joyful human activity. The architect is transformed into an engineer/artist and the contractor into an artist/constructor, both with a sense of the visual and to some extent a spiritual mission; in cooperation they have given the client a habitable work of art. That is not all. The composite vision engendered by cubism is here too. Furthermore, what Le Corbusier called the fifth dimension (time being the fourth) arising from the viewing of object from the air leading to the design of buildings from the topdown, is apparent in the manner in which the sources of natural light are located. One is hard pressed to think of other projects, big or small, in which so many aspects of the visual arts have a bearing.

Houses and house extensions

Roof details

North Elevation

NORTH ELEVATION

119

Interior view

South-western exterior view

Architecture of the third landscape

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North-western exterior view

121

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Houses and house extensions

EAST ELEVATION

West Elevation

EAST ELEVATION WEST ELEVATION

SOUTH ELEVATION WEST ELEVATION

South Elevation

NORTH ELEVATION SOUTH ELEVATION

NORTH ELEVATION

East Elevation

EAST ELEVATION

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Houses and house extensions

North-eastern exterior view

Eastern entrance

123

Interior view

Section A-A

10000 x 2400 x 5 Mild Steel Plate

300

50

50

SECTION A-A

460

hole for cables

640

540

295

5mm mild steel plate (2450x1250mm)

(2450x1250mm) 180

6

540

5mm mild steel plate

180 x 60 x 5

305

Retangular Tubing

305x305mm H-Beam

305 665

Section B-B

Interior view

10000 x 2400 x 5 Mild Steel Plate

300

50

50

SECTION A-A

460

hole for cables

5mm mild steel plate

540

(2450x1250mm) 180

640

295

180 x 60 x 5

305

Retangular Tubing

305x305mm H-Beam

305

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SECTION C-C

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Houses and house extensions

SECTION B-B

SECTION B-B

Architecture of the third landscape

665

Section C-C

SECTION C-C

125

CONTENTS

Architecture of the industrial town

Introduction

127

Architecture of necessity: Laboratory building, Sasol Midlands Geldenhuys & Jooste Architects

128

Architecture of empowerment: Kgodiso business centre, Sasolburg Geldenhuys & Jooste Architects

138

Architecture of the industrial town | Award-winning buildings of the Free State |

t will be a mistake to read from the works covered in the other sections of this monograph that a form of romantic attachment to a picturesque view of history and landscape determines the nature of architecture in the Free State. We have said enough in the introduction to indicate that our conception of landscape is much more inclusive, and this section on two award-winning buildings in the industrial town of Sasolburg strengthens this view.

Architecture of the third landscape

I

Architecture of the industrial town

127

Architecture of the industrial town Architecture of the third landscape

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This building by Jooste is a simple laboratory building in the industrial desert of Sasol Midlands in Sasolburg with its form and constructional syntax totally arising from the need to blast-proof the facility and the heavy servicing needed. Fair-faced concrete on the outside and inside, L-shaped walls at entry points provided with steel pivoted doors to protect the interior in case of blasts from the nearby reactor and the absence of windows directly facing out are all an inevitable and logical consequence of blast-proofing requirements. The need for heavy servicing led to the columns being placed outside as buttresses and beams to be up-stand ones over the roof slab.

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Geldenhuys & Jooste Architects | Awarded 2007

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

Architecture of necessity Laboratory building, Sasol Midlands

Roof plan, Laboratory Building, Sasol Midlands 129

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1. Entrance #1 2. Office 3. General office 4. Meeting room 5. Entrance #2 6. Passage 7. Staircase 8. Sample receiving area 9. Store 10. Sample room 11. Blast lobby 12. Sample preparation area 13. Laboratory 14. CT room 15. Kitchen 16. Toilets 17. Extruder room 18. OCS room 19. Gas cylinder store 20. Existing pipe rack

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21. Store 22. A/C plant room 23. Suspended cat walk 24. A/C plant 25. Battery room 26. Electrical room 27. Toilets

Architecture of the industrial town | Award-winning buildings of the Free State | Architecture of the third landscape

The utter simplicity and directness of this project reminds one of a valuable dictum by Lethaby. While we all know that Nicholaus Pevsner argued that a bicycle shed cannot be architecture, Lethaby dared to suggest that we should try to produce buildings that are as efficient and economical as a bicycle, which he saw as a humble masterpiece in design. This view is highly relevant to Jooste’s laboratory, with the proviso that all analogies have limits. The design of the bicycle of course follows the Albertian idea that a good composition is one to which nothing could be added and from which nothing could be taken away without doing violence to the overall elegance. One could point to many modern masterpieces and almost argue that contemporary design has gone beyond Alberti’s view. Jooste had to omit the originally envisaged first floor accommodation of a staff canteen for economic and safety reasons. It is a singular achievement that despite this, the building still has a sense of completeness. Circumspect buildings of this kind can be of help in converting an industrial desert into something of an industrial landscape, something that is beginning to be recognized as being of value.

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North-western exterior view

North Elevation

NORTH ELEVATION NORTH ELEVATION

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East Elevation

Architecture of the industrial town | Award-winning buildings of the Free State Architecture of the third landscape

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All in all, this project and the next present us with a honest, no-nonsense architecture pursued with integrity and directness.

All these works are contemporary and simple but not sensational in any way. They all are about enlightened stewardship of clients’ programmes and users’ requirements. More than anything else, one is struck by Humphries Jooste’s infectious enthusiasm for these rather modest buildings. One really and truly wishes that architects like him are more influential in the way we are pursuing post-apartheid reconstruction.

EAST ELEVATION EAST ELEVATION

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North-eastern exterior view

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Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Architecture of the industrial town

Passage

SECTION D-D

Section A-A

Section B-B

Section C-C

SECTION C-C

Architecture of the third landscape

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SECTION B-B

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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SECTION A-A

Architecture of the industrial town

SECTION C-C

Section D-D

SECTION D-D

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Architecture of the industrial town

Architecture of empowerment Kgodiso business centre, Sasolburg Geldenhuys Jooste Architects | Awarded 2007

Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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W R Lethaby (1857–1931), that most practical of English theorists (his collection of essays called ‘Form in Civilisation’ is still a good read) once wrote ‘…notwithstanding all the names, there are only two modern styles of architecture, one in which chimneys smoke, and the other where they do not’. Lethaby combined these down-to-earth views with a highly developed artistic conception of making architecture. In addition, he understood what it means to be a professional, which is quite simply giving direct and personal service to the client. Very rarely does one come across practitioners who exhibit this triple commitment to practicality, elegance and giving appropriate service to the client. It is refreshing to note that Humphries Jooste is aspiring to these ideals.

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Site plan, Kgodiso Bussiness Centre, Sasolburg 139

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Architecture of the industrial town | Award-winning buildings of the Free State Architecture of the third landscape

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One hears a great deal about low-cost and even no-cost housing with the associated concerns about poverty reduction.

Apart from the fact that housing for the poor never becomes an economic asset in the way it does for every other class of people, we seem unable to engage with the need for the poor to generate income through small scale entrepreneurship.

Is it not time that we move away from the negatively conceived notion of poverty reduction towards a more positive one of wealth creation? Jooste’s Kgodiso Business Centre next to a taxi rank in Zamdela, Sasolburg, looks at the task of providing affordable premises for the hawkers. The word ‘affordable’ here is used advisedly as many past efforts have failed to do that. Here one thinks of the Rosebank craft market or even the Metro Mall, both in Johannesburg. The poorest hawkers cannot afford to pay the rent in either, and the inevitable consequence of this is a minor form of gentrification of the informal trade benefiting only the better-off traders. It could of course be argued that this is not something architects could solve, but the implicit ethical stance taken by Jooste would suggest that this is indeed the task of our profession - quite simply because nobody else thinks that it is their concern.

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Northern faรงade

North elevation

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Two rows of donated shipping containers are bolted together as shops with a generous space between them, which in turn is covered by a dual-pitched corrugated steel roof supported on simple steel portal frames, forming a mall. This is an important move. Besides giving a sheltered space to the users, the architectural gesture it makes of being an urban barn has a townscape value. This steel roof is extended over the containers to provide a double roof, keeping the shops cool in the summer and reasonably warm in the winter. The end shops are given over to such uses as coffee shops requiring an outdoor yard, formed by a circular brick wall which in addition has the effect of anchoring the composition to the ground.

The entrance is formed on the existing desire line of pedestrian movement. The foyer here is of double-height volume with the administration office for the complex being provided at the mezzanine level. It is rare to find such care being paid to the design of a building as basic as this, but without it we will never escape the universal stereotype of a shopping mall and mutate the typology to something that is just right for a developing world like ours.

Architecture of the industrial town

Western faรงade

South-western exterior view

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Section A-A

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Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Architecture of the industrial town

Section B-B

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Architecture of the third landscape

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Award-winning buildings of the Free State

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Architecture of the industrial town

Sandile Gonje, Meeting of Two Cultures, 1993

To begin with, they beg to differ from the outsider’s view that the Free State terrain is monotonous and uninteresting. They carefully piece together an indigenous account based on a deeper reflection and a historical perspective of how the best buildings of the past and those of today form circumspect layers on this landscape where the expanses of veldt, the diversely textured and coloured grasslands, a huge glowing sky and brightness of light, the distant mountains and vast horizons are still the main natural protagonists. There is perhaps an understandable conviction among Free State architects that it is the landscape, in particular one with a strong rural component, that has to have priority over any architectural pretentions.

The modest Basotho beehive dwellings and their later variations of simple design and harmonious form never dominated the land form. Initially the colonials certainly imposed their Cape white lime-washed buildings but they too took their place in the landscape. At later stages there was more of a fusion of the styles in the form of Rondawelhuise which also was respectful to the terrain. There was thus a kind of give and take. The first bridge between wilderness and European habitation were the Free State farmsteads. Raman and Olivier speculate that the stark but evocative embodiment of clarification in Paul Klee’s painting from 1932 - Klarung - can serve as a possible visual analogue regarding the nature of this relation between landscape and modest farmer settlements. The frugality of the painterly means employed by Klee is striking. The painting, it is suggested, can be used to imagine and appreciate something of the liminality of the Afrikaner settlers and their homes in the new territory, of the dual sense of isolation and freedom emerging from their experience of this environment. In a strange way it is also evocative of their desire to forge places and communities and their determination to create order, a relatively rigid one at that, out of the bleak circumstances faced by them.

Last word | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

iterature and visual art have often engaged with the landscape of the Free State, particularly in terms of landscape as a construct of the mind. There has not been much by way of writing that relates contemporary architecture to the rather unique terrain of this central part of South Africa. It is not that architects have not been considering what to make of the lie of the land, or what building to put on it, and how. Their designs both present and past, reveal a preoccupation with the setting and even with the consideration of their buildings as parallel to landscape forms. But these considerations have not been articulated as much as they should have been. In writing this book Raman and Olivier to some extent make amends.

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L

Dirk van den Berg

Architecture of the third landscape

last word

The projects that concern the authors range from the spatial plan for the University of the Free State, through some restoration work in the countryside and the city to new houses and buildings. These all reflect the commitment to come to terms with adverse circumstances. Although the context is different from that faced by the early settlers and the fact that each of these buildings is unique, the struggle between architecture and the vagaries and exigencies presented by the site are still as ominous. Raman and Olivier engage fully with the Afrikaner backpack of the myth of a chosen people and the recollection of a record of success over all odds. They ask whether recent developments have any bearing on all this. They argue that

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myth here has to be understood in an anthropological sense of value-laden beliefs and traditions: “Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing” wrote Roland Barthes.1 Afrikaner spirit is exemplary here. It is a proud one without ever wanting to flaunt its success. Raman and Olivier suggest that, more than anyone else’s, Gawie Fagan’s work demonstrates this spirit.

The difficult sites which Free State architects like Britz, Roodt, the Smits and Ras have wrestled with and created decent works may in microcosm represent the Afrikaner struggle with an impossible territory. In one sense, far from chasing after esoteric theories, Raman and Olivier argue that the whole notion of coming to terms with the difficulties of terrain can be witnessed in the design backyards of today’s architects. With considerable respect and affection for the Free State architecture of the past and that currently under review, they come to the enthusiastic conclusion that the Afrikaner imagination is more fertile than the terrain where they settled − in which they envisioned modest but significant buildings, meaningful places and settlements with a sense of identity and tradition into which the wildest of Afrikaner myths have insinuated themselves.

They suggest that there are projects even within the modern urban sprawl of cities like Bloemfontein where boundaries between past and present, wild and domestic have been collapsed together. Adjacent to and in the back gardens of House Horne they see the wilderness and hear wildlife. House Uys is for them a farmstead in the veldt and House Enkalweni is a parallel Free State landscape. The stable rehabilitated into House Pienaar is still an enduring part of the veldt at the borders of the city and so is House Horne refurbished into an architect’s office.

The vast Free State terrain must have been and still is one at which Afrikaners and other settlers at any rate shuddered as it were with pleasure. This is indeed an instance of the sublime experience. Of course, the aesthetics of sublimity as well as romantic landscape painting derive from city dwellers’ experience of nature - not farmers’ and peasants’ experience of the land as a terrain of work, routine and a struggle for survival, but as a domain of freedom and escape from urban routine and industrial production. Nevertheless, Raman and Olivier argue that in so far as escape from what the Afrikaners saw as British miss-rule and search for their version of freedom, certain conceptions of the aesthetics of the sublime and romanticism have relevance. It is often argued that the conception of the picturesque is in between the sublime and the beautiful which the English embraced rather energetically. Romanticism in turn also has links with the picturesque, particularly for the English who felt that nature is to be apprehended as being subjective and as a life-force which to this day has echoes in that country.

While the colonial settlers in the Free State never overtly felt the nuances of the sublime, the romantic or the picturesque, resonances of these are there in the Afrikaner outlook. Lionel Esher2, one of the leading environmental critics, argued that “in the English landscape, the architectural elements are trees rather than buildings”. Something similar is true of the Free State landscape where the distant mountains are the architectural elements rather than any grand buildings − the farmstead and the little towns and hamlets having a most modest presence. All this might point toward a longing for the picturesque but nearly all the projects that concern this investigation avoid it by using sound historically tried and tested concepts founded

Last word |

Ultimately one surmises from the monograph that the success of Free State architecture is to a large extent due to its special relation to landscape conceptions and these award-winning buildings do, in one form or another, take a leaf out of this tradition. This tradition is not a cultivated one but arises from the turbulent history of the Afrikaners and their links to the land to which they were relegated, and as such it is almost instinctive. Nevertheless, there are lessons in it for contemporary architecture which may have relevance beyond the Free State.

Award-winning buildings of the Free State

Even in certain indifferent sites, some of the architecture covered in this monograph seems to come to grips with the issues of setting and landscape. The Firmitas Building by Jan Ras provides us with an example. The site is away from the well set out historical city core and located between the two heavy traffic arteries of Nelson Mandela Drive and Zastron Street. The Free State landscape conception to which architecture and other elements are a servant has totally lapsed here. There is no longer that innocence of place engendered by the simple act of dwelling. How can an architect make some amends to this dire state of affairs? One answer is to return to modesty in built form, avoiding dizzy heights and assertive volumes together with an emphasis on horizontality which always has been the hallmark of architecture that is well-mannered towards landscape.

One other recourse is to look inwards into courtyards and patios rather than to the atrophied landscape outside. The hope therefore is that with the inward focus and an emphasis on horizontality, a newly invented context will emerge which will in turn lead to a new form of coherence.

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The concept of sublime has been brought up to date by writers like Lyotard who see modernism itself, with its drive towards that which cannot be represented, as quintessentially sublime. Modernism rejected imitation as well as classical and academic notions of beauty. These historical realities do not escape Raman and Olivier. In a well-supported original interpretation, they vigorously argue that the Vaal Estate Studio synthesises many principles of constructivism, cubism and what is called maximal minimalism.

Architecture of the third landscape

on human movement. The promenade architecturale, far from being a discovery of Le Corbusier, goes back to Piranesi. This concept has a presence in most works of the Smits and Britz. So is the conception of sublimity, for instance, in the interior of the Main Building of the UFS campus and its garden for the Rector, and in the way the Enkalweni house responds to the landscape.

1 R. Barthes, Mythologies, trans. A Lavers, New York, 1977 pp 129.

2 Quoted in Gardens of the Mind, by Spens. M, Antique Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 1992, p173.

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conservation Huis Van Rensburg Du Preez, K. (1997) Huis van Rensburg: Philippolis – Aftreehuis vir wewenaar boer. Architecture SA. November/December: 14-15 Photographers Kobus du Preez, Jako Olivier House Horne conversion Joubert, ‘O. (2002) Modernism rejuvenated - House Horne, Rayton, Bloemfontein. Leading Architecture & Design. Sept./ Oct.: 47-50 Joubert, ‘O. (2009) House Horne Conversion. In Joubert, ‘O. (Ed.) 10 Years+100 Buildings: Architecture in a Democratic South Africa. Cape Town, Bell Roberts: 234-237 Photographer Reinier Brönn House Klerksvly Photographer Christopher Sparks House Pienaar Diedericks, H. (2004) Stability, VISI. Autumn: 86-95 Joubert, ‘O. (2009) House Pienaar. In Joubert, ‘O. (Ed.) 10 Years+100 Buildings: Architecture in a Democratic South Africa. Cape Town, Bell Roberts: 230-233 Raman, P.G. (2009) A critique of the built works of our alumni and staff. Supplement to Architecture South Africa. July/ August: 20-23 Photographers Reinier Brönn, Paul Evans, David Ross Main Building Raman, P.G. (2008) Restructuring of the Central Building, University of the Free State – Award of Merit. Architecture South Africa. May/June: 26-29 Knipe, A et al (Eds.) (2008). Main Building Refurbishment, University of the Free State. Awards 2005/2006, 2006/2007.

Cape Town, Picasso: 40-41 Du Preez, K. & Swart, G. (2009) The Interior : Free State, Nothern Cape & Karoo. In Joubert, ‘O. (Ed.) 10 Years+100 Buildings: Architecture in a Democratic South Africa. Cape Town, Bell Roberts: 220-221

Firmitas Building Ras, J. (1996) Firmitas Building. South African Architectural Digest. 1: 110-111 Photographer Jako Olivier Thakaneng Bridge Student Centre Joubert, ‘O. (2002) The democratization of campus architecture - new student centre, University of the Free State. Leading Architecture & Design. September/October: 43-45 Low, I. (Ed.) (2004) Student Centre, University of the Free State. Digest of South African Architecture: 84-87 Rasmuss, H. & Govender, T.(Eds.) (2005) Student Centre, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, The Free State, South Africa. World Architecture. 2: 108-109 Deckler, T.et al. (2006) Thakaneng Bridge Student Centre, University of the Free State, Contemporary South African Architecture in a Landscape of Transition. Cape Town, Double Storey: 92-95 Raman, P.G. (2006) UFS Student Centre, Bloemfontein. Architecture South Africa. March/April: 26-29 Cooke, J.(ed.) (2006) Awards of Merit 2006, Architecture South Africa. September/October: 15 Knipe, A et al (Eds.) (2008) Thakaneng Bridge: UFS Student Centre. Awards 2005/2006, 2007/2008. Cape Town, Picasso: 152-153 Joubert, ‘O. (2009) Thakaneng Bridge Student Centre. In Joubert, ‘O. (Ed.) 10 Years+100 Buildings: Architecture in a Democratic South Africa. Cape Town, Bell Roberts: 238-241 Photographers Paul Alberts, Reinier Brönn, Paul Evans

Bibliography | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

buildings in the city and university

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Raman, P.G. (2009) Voice-over by P.G. Raman on three projects. Supplement to Architecture South Africa. July/August: 15-19 Photographer Stephen Collett

Architecture of the third landscape

bibliography

houses and house extensions House Britz Britz, B. (2000) Huis Britz. South African Architecture. September/October: 64-67 Saunders, N. & Britz, B. (2000) Huis Britz. January/February: 10-11 Raman, P.G. (2009) Voice-over by P.G. Raman on three projects. Supplement to Architecture South Africa.

July/August: 15-19

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Photographers Bannie Britz, Charles Corbett House Smit Joubert, ‘O. (2002) House Smit, Waverley, Bloemfontein. Leading Architecture & Design. September/October: 52-53 Pretorius, H. (2009) The influence of landscape and steel sheds on three houses by Jan and Petria Smit. Supplement to Architecture South Africa. July/August: 24-32 Photographer Jan Smit House Enkalweni Uys, A. (2006) Moderne huis / Modern house. Visi. Somer/Summer: 66-75 Low, I. (Ed.) (2007/2008) House Enkalweni, Rayton, Bloemfontein. Digest of South African Architecture. 12: 212-213 Raman, P.G. (2008) Architecture as parallel: Two award-winning houses – building in the landscape. Architecture South Africa. March/April: 8-13 Pretorius, H. (2009) The influence of landscape and steel sheds on three houses by Jan and Petria Snit. Supplement to Architecture South Africa. July/August: 24-32 Raman, P.G. (2009) House Enkalweni. In Joubert, ‘O. (Ed.) 10 Years+100 Buildings: Architecture in a Democratic South Africa. Cape Town, Bell Roberts: 226-229 Photographers David Ross (courtesy of Visi Magazine), Jan Smit, Bernard Viljoen House Uys Uys, A. (2006) Die storie van ‘n moderne gesinshuis / The story of a modern family house. Visi. Lente/Spring: 161-168 Low, I. (Ed.) (2007/2008) House Uys, Rayton, Bloemfontein. Digest of South African Architecture. 12: 208-209 Raman, P.G. (2008) Architecture as parallel: Two award-winning houses – building in the landscape. Architecture South Africa. March/April: 8-13 Pretorius, H. (2009) The influence of landscape and steel sheds on three houses by Jan and Petria Smit. Supplement to Architecture South Africa. July/August: 24-32 Photographers David Ross (courtesy of Visi Magazine), Jan Smit

Vaal Studio Anon. (2007) Homepages. Wallpaper Magazine. September, 25: 176-177 Photographers J. W. Franklin architecture of the industrial town Laboratory Building Raman, P.G. (2007) Architecture of empowerment and necessity. Architecture South Africa. July/Augustus: 78-81 Knipe, A et al (Eds.) (2008). New Laboratory Complex at Sasol Midlands. Awards 2005/2006, 2006/2007. Cape Town, Picasso: 38-39 Low, I. (Ed.) (2008) New laboratory complex, Sasol Midlands, Sasolburg. Digest of South African Architecture. 13: 94-95 Photographer Bernard Viljoen Kgodiso business centre Raman, P.G. (2007) Architecture of empowerment and necessity. Architecture South Africa. July/Augustus: 78-81 Low, I. (Ed.) (2008) The Kgodiso business centre, Zandela, Sasolburg. Digest of South African Architecture. 13: 124-125 Photographer Bernard Viljoen

Bibliography | Award-winning buildings of the Free State

House Rosmarin Photographers Michael Scholes and Associate Architect

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House Relling Photographers Hennie Lambrechts Argitekte

Architecture of the third landscape

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