A. Stipanov, 2016
A Century of Impact This year, Wits turns 100 years old. What would eventually evolve into today’s School of Architecture and Planning has been there since the beginning. Students in our programmes now are the next generation of impactful practitioners which have, to date, contributed to a century of impact. The Department of Architecture (now School of Architecture and Planning) was founded in 1922 and is among the oldest on the African continent. The intellectual heritage of theory and practice was established by the architect Professor G.E. Pearse who published the ground-breaking work Eighteenth Century Architecture in South Africa (1933). He was the first Professor of Architecture in South Africa, and his seminal work and measured drawings set the standard for architectural studies in the country. In a similar historical vein, the architect Rex Martienssen is
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recognised as one of the founders of the Zerohour Group and was linked to the introduction of the modern movement in architecture to South Africa. We recognise Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein (B. Arch 1936), the anti-apartheid activist and member of the South African Communist Party and ANC, who was charged with high treason in 1956. Gilbert Herbert (B. Arch 1947), the Baker Scholar for 1947, produced the central history of modernism in the country, Martienssen & the International Style (1974). We also recall Denise ScottBrown, whose work with the historian Robert Venturi and architect Steven Izenour, Learning From Las Vegas (1972), changed the face of modern architectural practice and education in the middle of the twentieth century with reverberating influences that continue today. Clive Chipkin (1929–2021), a Wits graduate of 1954, produced the key architecture volumes on the city, Johannesburg Style and Johannesburg Transition.
