CITICHAT 29/2008 - 25 July 2008
Urban Pot Pourie
I’ve been away on leave this past week so am offering a variety of issues – a bit of an urban pot pourie!
Salisbury House
Nearly six years ago (Citichat 47/2002) I wrote about a small node of urban regeneration in one of the forgotten inner city suburbs, Jeppestown!
“Jeppestown was founded by CEG Julius Jeppe, who moved from Pretoria to Johannesburg in 1886. The Ford and Jeppe Estate Company was established by Julius Jeppe Snr together with his son, Sir Julius Jeppe, and their partner LP Ford. An 1894 description of the suburb says it comprised “421 buildings, two churches, a masonic temple, St Mary’s Collegiate for Girls and a library” adding that “there were even rumours of electric light for each house”. By 1896 there were 5 647 people living in Jeppestown which, in1897, was described as “the most ambitious and the best area” among the “neat little suburbs on the outskirts of the town proper.” I’m not sure how accurate that description is as the area was acknowledged as a ‘mixed area in terms of social class, Jeppe essentially forming part of the mining perimeter of old-established white working-class districts.’ Clive Chipkin (Johannesburg Style) quotes an 1897 description of the inner city suburbs of those times as “rural Booysens in the south, grimy Fordsburg in the west, patrician Doornfontein on the north-east and domesticated Jeppe ‘for the man of limited purse’ in the south-east.
In 1890 St Michael’s School for Boys was opened and was the forerunner of the well known Jeppe High School for Boys. St Mary’s School for Girls was subsequently established The east-end of the suburb became known as ‘Belgravia’ where there existed a number of “desirable residences in a locality where social advantages are to be obtained.” The transition between Jeppestown and Belgravia was marked by a toll-gate across the roadway next to a building called Salisbury House.”
Built in 1903, Salisbury House boasted ground floor retail whilst the upper level provided residential accommodation with verandahs edged in cast iron “broekie lace”. An example of Victorian architecture and construction, its verandah style design was based on assembling cast-iron components ordered from a catalogue of the Glasgow foundry of Walter Macfarlane. In November 2002 I wrote “As with so many of our jewels supposedly in the safe-keeping of public authorities, the building has been desecrated by vandals. Many of the magnificent panelled and lead lighted doors are gone, all brassware and many floors of broad oregon pine floor-boards are gone as are the fireplace surrounds and sanitaryware. But the good news is that the building is being leased from the Council by the School of Practical Philosophy who are seeking funding to restore the building and place it back into everyday use as a much needed extension to their educational facilities. The SPP owns and occupies the original St Mary’s school building directly to the north of Salisbury House where they have established the St James Preparatory School.”
Well the even better news was that, later, to their credit, the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC) actually provided funding for the restoration of the building. I was taken through the building again a couple of weeks back and it has been restored with a real eye to original detail. Wonderful job!
Just one fly in the ointment, a rather large fly at that! The building stands on the corner of Marshall and Berg Streets and its verandah extends the full width along the pavements of these two streets supported by cast iron columns which are positioned on the very edges of the kerbs. Not long after I first visited the building in 2002, the architect contacted me regarding the vulnerability of the columns to traffic and I put her in touch with the Johannesburg Roads Agency in the hope that they would erect a protective barrier, but apparently little transpired. In October 2005, an ‘out-of-control’ vehicle ‘took out’ the columns on Berg Street and the entire balcony on the east end of the building collapsed. A claim was submitted through the JPC’s insurance brokers but absolutely no response has been forthcoming! So this finely restored building now has an unprotected, partly destroyed eastern elevation through which the elements are slowly but surely seeping and negatively affecting the interior restoration. Three years for an insurance claim? Surely that must be some kind of a record but not one of which the Council can be proud!
Woolworths Foods
Following the rash of suburban “Food Stores” it is good to see Woolworths bringing that brand into the inner city again with a 500m2 “micro store” at 28 Harrison Street.
This is evidently something of an inner city prototype and “its success could herald the roll out of a number of similar stores which the group is currently considering in major CBDs across South Africa.”
The store is targeted at convenience food shopping for the day-time office market “In addition to lunches and a good range of prepared meals, the store will provide all the basics from bread and milk to fresh produce and general groceries. “There is a move to return to the CBD and a substantial number of companies are investing in offices in the area.” Should the demand reflect a need to open for longer than weekdays to 18h00 and Saturdays to 12 noon, we might see a 24 operation back in the city which would be great news.
A year after taking ownership of 28 Harrison Street in October 2006, the owners, Amdec, “had transformed office vacancies of 12,500m2 of the 19,500m2 building to full occupancy by August 2007 and upgraded the address to the highest standards.” Woolies will be a valuable addition!
Urban Development Zone Tax Incentive
A recent media report covered the ‘re-launch’ of the urban development zone (UDZ) tax incentive. The ‘window’ period for the UDZ was due to end next year but, following representation by a number of cities, has been increased by five years to 2014. The article quotes the City as stating that “It includes sectional title and shared ownership, as well as first buyers of new or renovated/refurbished buildings.” Not too sure of the accuracy of that statement, I didn’t understand UDZ to be targeted at ‘first buyers’ but maybe that is a new ruling! I’ve also had a number of buyers of sectional title apartments tell me that SARS has rejected their tax claims on the basis that the benefits only come into effect if the property is used for income-generating purposes i.e. rentals or, I would assume, if one ran one’s business from the property. One disenchanted purchaser writes “This has arisen as quite an issue for residents who have bought redeveloped apartments in the inner city (often very up-market lofts etc) for their own residential use. Firstly, the SARS directives were not made clear to prospective buyers (neither by SARS, as no-one there knows much about the UDZ, nor by developers/agents) In fact, new apartments are still being sold with the expectation of a 30% tax rebate. No-one seems to be aware that the new owner cannot claim these incentives unless he chooses to rent out the apartment (income generating).Secondly, it seems highly contradictory that the UDZ benefit, meant to encourage inner city investment, is now excluding the very residents that want to live in their own refurbished apartments. Surely one cannot expect much interest or rejuvenation in the city if these beautiful apartments are being used solely for rental purposes and those who are passionate about buying and living in the CBD are pushed away because they cannot receive their UDZ benefit? I'm sure you are well aware that those people renting apartments (in general) have neither the passion nor interest in maintaining the apartments, nor the apartment buildings, nor the surrounding areas.”
Hillbrow Tower
Received quite a large number of e-mails regarding the refusal by Telkom to re-open the Hillbrow Tower to the public and regarding the proposed ‘sosatie’/soccer ball. Here’s one comment “The thought of a 'realistic' soccer ball skewered on the shaft below the superstructures is both unimaginative and appalling. Something less yechh and more high tech, such as a very lightweight rotating frame with colour LED's (to be in tune, politically/environmentally and Eskom friendly) that outline the ball panels at night (see the TV logo used on the UEFA broadcasts), see-through by day, would be something I could live with. If put at the very top (strengthen the existing topmast, the 'ball-frame' can be prefabbed elsewhere and choppered into place), it signifies super, achievement, victory, success - anywhere else it signifies a half-mast, semi-conscious (dare I say 'half-assed?) half-job.”
Traffic Island landscaping
Have you noticed the rash of traffic island upgrading in the suburbs? If you have, you will have noticed the vast amount of stone being used (not the easiest to keep clean of litter) and the use of ghastly giant pre-cast ‘jugs’ that have been placed on some of them. I’ve been wondering if someone is planning to put huge pre-cast soccer balls on top of them! The writer quoted above regarding the Hillbrow Tower, also raises the landscaping aspect:
“When is the City going to realize the value of getting good design from good designers to make their expenditure really count? Take a look at the 'traffic island whimsy' that is going on in Sandton - the absurd additions to the roadside at the Sandton Drive and William Nicol Intersection (southwest corner) and now also showing further North at Grosvenor Crossing. The latter even ignores practical aspects, such as non-pedestrian planting areas aligned with the pedestrian crossing lines of the intersection. There are some 'stepping stones' elsewhere, but hardly trafficable and leading into the vehicle areas - making jaywalkers out of anyone trying to use them. And those huge fake-roks and precast giant 'jugs' randomly scattered for 'effect'? I suggest they hold some open competitions for design and artwork, rather, for these instances and make it a world-class city with quality urban area land/road/scape design.”
AMEN brother!
South African Innovation
Two reports in “South Africa – the Good News” caught my eye last week. The first concerned a Modular Traffic Light System which is currently being tested on the corner of Sandton Drive and Grayston Avenue, Sandton. Evidently an international study conducted by the University of Adelaide in Australia found that 30% of all accidents around the world involve impacts with street poles or traffic lights. The Modular system being tested is created from individual plastic segments that stack on top of each other and are then held together in compression by a lightweight rope. In the event of a collision only broken segments need to be replaced. Brilliant idea – now all we have to do is to develop a system that keeps the bulbs working!
The other report was in regard to an invention by UCT post-grads called “WhereisMyShuttle”. “By installing GPRS devices on buses, the system offers commuters real-time tracking and scheduling services via their cellphones.” You also are advised about abnormal bus activities – “such as late arrival times or detours from designated routes.” Another brilliant idea – only, in Joeys, that would keep cellphones pretty busy!
Office Vacancy Figures
Finally, the latest SAPOA Office Vacancy figures show that vacancies have dropped to a ten year low of 9.9% for the second quarter of the year compared to 28% in 2000 and 15% twelve months ago. What is clearly influencing the office vacancy figures is the large amount of refurbishing of previous office space to residential accommodation. Rentals have moved up by 23% in the first quarter of the year according to Rode & Associates.
Have a good weekend – cheers, neil
Friday, July 25, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Urban Age Conference Citichat 18 July 2008
CITICHAT 28/2008 - 18 July 2008
The Challenge for Cities
The Urban Age Project was developed primarily by the London School of Economics and Political Science and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society. Six conferences were held over the 2005 and 2006 period, one in each of the cities on which the Project focused. These were New York City, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg and Berlin. After each conference a bulletin was issued “summarising the more substantive contributions and including a series of salient quotes from key speakers and participants, giving a flavour of the differing dimensions of the debate within each city.” A group of “travelling experts” gave presentations together with limited local input. The Project has ultimately culminated in the publication of a recently released six hundred page volume entitled “The Endless City”.
In regard to the conferences the book records “Each conference lasted for two days, with an invited audience of between 100 and 150 people drawn from the city’s political, development, academic and design communities. Each conference was small enough to allow for discursive sessions among all participants and large enough to incorporate many opinions and backgrounds.”
The Johannesburg conference was held in Corner House on what may have been the top floor that had been, and probably still is, stripped bare – no floors or ceilings or finished walls and, because the plaster had been stripped from the walls, icy drafts drove into the room from the gaps around the window frames. The organisers must have been wanting the participants to practically feel part of the urban revitalisation the city was then starting to experience by using this shell of a glorious building from our past (which to my knowledge is still in that state!) In my case, all I remember was having a mild dose of the ‘flu at the time, and the freezing venue didn’t help to improve my temper nor my participation. The first day had started badly enough in that I had the wrong date in my diary to lead the “travelling experts” on a tour of the inner city. Then, when we got the tour going belatedly from the travelling experts’ Rosebank hotel, I had to listen in horror as a burly security officer (white) assured the participants that he and his armed colleagues would be just behind the bus in an appropriately kitted out security truck and would be shadowing their every move. He clearly felt that the risk factor was so high that he had to provide the kind of instructions that would make any participant more than merely apprehensive. In fact, when one of the “travelling experts” later shared his impressions of the city with the conference, he said that it was the first city he had ever visited that had found it necessary to provide such cover. Not only was it not necessary, nor was the over-the-top security ‘briefing’ or ‘support’ arranged by the city, but it also created a totally skewed perspective of what they were going to see.
The book cleverly uses statistics in a compelling way. Thus the cover comprises a series of 22 statistics dominated by those that relate to urbanisation – “10% lived in cities in 1900; 50% is living in cities in 2007; 75% will be living in cities in 2050” But, sadly a negative bias infiltrates the reporting on Johannesburg. Johannesburg’s ‘statistical page’ is, believe it or not, “69% of office space was in the Central Business District in 1990; 30% of office space was in the Central Business District in 2000; 22% of office space was in the Central Business District in 2005.” Why not that Johannesburg’s average annual GVA growth from 1996 to 2001 was 4.2% and from 2001 to 2004, 5.3%? Why not that the percentage of households without water on site had dropped from 15.52% in 2001 to 4.96% in 2004? It is bad enough when locals can only see the negatives in a sea of positives – we don’t need help from the international community!
In the same vein, the author of one of the articles on Johannesburg (now an ex-local), addressing inner city commercial space, provides this comment “For instance, a derelict seven storey office block next to the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Braamfontein, draped in advertising since 2003 has, in three years, rewarded its owner six times over. Far more lucrative and far less troublesome than recommissioning and letting, this has become a widely used model of urban regeneration producing a kind of ‘post-architectural’ city in the making.” A widely used model of urban generation???????????????? Come off it! Maybe three buildings in nearly two thousand.
My problem with such publications and reports is twofold. They come out way after the event (now all of four years) during which time, in our case certainly, change has accelerated, but are absorbed into the world of reference books and academia from whence they are endlessly quoted as the status quo. For instance the last chapter of the book is accompanied by a photograph of the Ponte atrium taken from the bottom looking up – and captioned “The Ponti (sic) tower in downtown Johannesburg – a white middle class housing project taken over by illegal black African immigrants – epitomises the tensions and opportunities of the twenty-first city”. In last night’s Star is the same picture but taken from the top down illustrating a story headed “The full Ponte: new lease of life for landmark – a pianist in the lobby, a climbing wall, a gym, several shops and restaurants, a children’s playground…… “ Now that’s what Joeys is all about!
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, (am I being overly sensitive or defensive?), the book actually provides a very useful and important contribution to the way we approach and deal with many of the urban issues that we all struggle with. “Informality and its Discontents”, for instance, suggests ” that informality defines the urban landscape of many global cities with hawkers occupying interstitial nodes that are either unanticipated or undermined by urban designers and city regulators”. The chapter ends with this statement: “Undoubtedly, the growth of future cities depends on how well we are able to plan for the unplanned. The generic theme evolving from Asia, Latin America and Africa is that as cities expand, the ‘informal’ sector grows faster than the ‘formal’ sector. This means that our plans will need paradigmatic change to deal with the heterogeneous housing and mobility needs of growing city populations. We will have to plan spaces for activities that cannot always be well-defined and predicted. It is better to plan for what is inevitable rather to turn a blind eye to the future.”
Immensely thought provoking is the final chapter in the book. Written by Bruce Katz, Andy Altman and Julie Wagner entitled “An Agenda for the Urban Age”.
The proposition it offers is that the twenty-first century, with more than half of the world’s population living in cities, will be the urban age with the emerging conurbations as the vehicles for addressing the major challenges that face the world today; extending economic prosperity, promoting environmental sustainability and reducing poverty. But, that cities lack a coherent roadmap to realise the promise of the urban age…. “our primary conclusion is that there are broad disconnects between urban change on the one hand and urban policy and practice on the other. These disconnects are magnified at national and multinational levels where specialised and one dimensional policies dominate. As a result, the promise of cities is systematically undermined….in an urban age, the battles to achieve the highest aspirations of the twenty-first century and beyond will be fought – and won or lost – in our cities.
• There is a sharp disconnect between the challenges of the urban age and our current set of urban solutions
• There is a disconnect between policies intended to promote economic growth, policies designed to advance environmental sustainability and policies aimed at reducing poverty
• There is a disconnect between the complexity of challenges and the narrow responses that dominate urban policy
• There is a disconnect between the artificial geography of government , and the real footprint of the economy and environment
• In the twenty first century, markets are moving quickly to reshape and remake urban places. Yet urban policy and urban governance appears stuck somewhere in the twentieth century. The lag between transformational change and governmental action is immense.
These really apply to us - so how do we address these issues, these disconnects? The authors suggest a new urban agenda – starting with the people responsible for delivering the urban agenda – moving from specialists and technicians “who interpret and strive to fix discrete problems such as traffic congestion or slum housing” to generalists “who see the connections between challenges and who work to devise and implement policies that advance multiple objectives simultaneously”. “Imagine networks of city builders who cut across disciplines, programmes, practices and professions. These city builders will perfect new ways of ;’reading’ cities, deploy new metrics and measures to diagnose city assets and ailments, and gauge city progress” “….we need to arm city builders with programmes and policies that champion integration and holistic thinking.”
To produce such people we need to find institutional vehicles that can deliver multidisciplinary learning, our existing academia is just too fraught with “artificial divisions between separate schools, professions curricula, departments and self-defeating fiefdoms:” “Making linkages and connections between policies must be the norm not the exception reinforced by incentives and new structures and systems. “The vertical silo driven bureaucracies of the past century need to be laid horizontal. In many respects, closing the divide between related but separately administered policies is as important as bridging the partisan and ideological divides that characterise so many countries and undermine urban success.”
“We see today that what makes cities vital in the twenty-first century are those very tributes of urbanism that we destroyed in the twentieth century. Complexity. Density. Diversity of people and cultures. The convergence of the physical environment at multiple scales. The messy intersection of activities. A variance of distinctive designs. The layering of the old and new. These are the physical elements that advance competitive, sustainable and inclusive cities.”
Cheers, neil
PS – the good news appears to be that Wits has no intention of demolishing the Tower of Light (although some of the sources of that story emanated from Wits itself!) I received a wonderful letter from the Deputy Chancellor, Finance and Operations “We therefore take extreme offence at such piece of unfounded and malicious disinformation being circulated in your otherwise admirable newsletter.
I would like to request an absolute groveling apology sent on the same subscription list - I say “absolutely groveling” as you have not only carelessly impugned our planning and heritage intentions on the basis of zilch evidence or factuality, but you have also insulted the intelligence of an organization that stands as an uncompromising beacon of knowledge in our city and society.”
The article was neither unfounded nor malicious, but the heritage lobby is so delighted at your assurances that I happily prostrate myself before you!
The Challenge for Cities
The Urban Age Project was developed primarily by the London School of Economics and Political Science and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society. Six conferences were held over the 2005 and 2006 period, one in each of the cities on which the Project focused. These were New York City, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg and Berlin. After each conference a bulletin was issued “summarising the more substantive contributions and including a series of salient quotes from key speakers and participants, giving a flavour of the differing dimensions of the debate within each city.” A group of “travelling experts” gave presentations together with limited local input. The Project has ultimately culminated in the publication of a recently released six hundred page volume entitled “The Endless City”.
In regard to the conferences the book records “Each conference lasted for two days, with an invited audience of between 100 and 150 people drawn from the city’s political, development, academic and design communities. Each conference was small enough to allow for discursive sessions among all participants and large enough to incorporate many opinions and backgrounds.”
The Johannesburg conference was held in Corner House on what may have been the top floor that had been, and probably still is, stripped bare – no floors or ceilings or finished walls and, because the plaster had been stripped from the walls, icy drafts drove into the room from the gaps around the window frames. The organisers must have been wanting the participants to practically feel part of the urban revitalisation the city was then starting to experience by using this shell of a glorious building from our past (which to my knowledge is still in that state!) In my case, all I remember was having a mild dose of the ‘flu at the time, and the freezing venue didn’t help to improve my temper nor my participation. The first day had started badly enough in that I had the wrong date in my diary to lead the “travelling experts” on a tour of the inner city. Then, when we got the tour going belatedly from the travelling experts’ Rosebank hotel, I had to listen in horror as a burly security officer (white) assured the participants that he and his armed colleagues would be just behind the bus in an appropriately kitted out security truck and would be shadowing their every move. He clearly felt that the risk factor was so high that he had to provide the kind of instructions that would make any participant more than merely apprehensive. In fact, when one of the “travelling experts” later shared his impressions of the city with the conference, he said that it was the first city he had ever visited that had found it necessary to provide such cover. Not only was it not necessary, nor was the over-the-top security ‘briefing’ or ‘support’ arranged by the city, but it also created a totally skewed perspective of what they were going to see.
The book cleverly uses statistics in a compelling way. Thus the cover comprises a series of 22 statistics dominated by those that relate to urbanisation – “10% lived in cities in 1900; 50% is living in cities in 2007; 75% will be living in cities in 2050” But, sadly a negative bias infiltrates the reporting on Johannesburg. Johannesburg’s ‘statistical page’ is, believe it or not, “69% of office space was in the Central Business District in 1990; 30% of office space was in the Central Business District in 2000; 22% of office space was in the Central Business District in 2005.” Why not that Johannesburg’s average annual GVA growth from 1996 to 2001 was 4.2% and from 2001 to 2004, 5.3%? Why not that the percentage of households without water on site had dropped from 15.52% in 2001 to 4.96% in 2004? It is bad enough when locals can only see the negatives in a sea of positives – we don’t need help from the international community!
In the same vein, the author of one of the articles on Johannesburg (now an ex-local), addressing inner city commercial space, provides this comment “For instance, a derelict seven storey office block next to the Nelson Mandela Bridge in Braamfontein, draped in advertising since 2003 has, in three years, rewarded its owner six times over. Far more lucrative and far less troublesome than recommissioning and letting, this has become a widely used model of urban regeneration producing a kind of ‘post-architectural’ city in the making.” A widely used model of urban generation???????????????? Come off it! Maybe three buildings in nearly two thousand.
My problem with such publications and reports is twofold. They come out way after the event (now all of four years) during which time, in our case certainly, change has accelerated, but are absorbed into the world of reference books and academia from whence they are endlessly quoted as the status quo. For instance the last chapter of the book is accompanied by a photograph of the Ponte atrium taken from the bottom looking up – and captioned “The Ponti (sic) tower in downtown Johannesburg – a white middle class housing project taken over by illegal black African immigrants – epitomises the tensions and opportunities of the twenty-first city”. In last night’s Star is the same picture but taken from the top down illustrating a story headed “The full Ponte: new lease of life for landmark – a pianist in the lobby, a climbing wall, a gym, several shops and restaurants, a children’s playground…… “ Now that’s what Joeys is all about!
Now that I’ve got that off my chest, (am I being overly sensitive or defensive?), the book actually provides a very useful and important contribution to the way we approach and deal with many of the urban issues that we all struggle with. “Informality and its Discontents”, for instance, suggests ” that informality defines the urban landscape of many global cities with hawkers occupying interstitial nodes that are either unanticipated or undermined by urban designers and city regulators”. The chapter ends with this statement: “Undoubtedly, the growth of future cities depends on how well we are able to plan for the unplanned. The generic theme evolving from Asia, Latin America and Africa is that as cities expand, the ‘informal’ sector grows faster than the ‘formal’ sector. This means that our plans will need paradigmatic change to deal with the heterogeneous housing and mobility needs of growing city populations. We will have to plan spaces for activities that cannot always be well-defined and predicted. It is better to plan for what is inevitable rather to turn a blind eye to the future.”
Immensely thought provoking is the final chapter in the book. Written by Bruce Katz, Andy Altman and Julie Wagner entitled “An Agenda for the Urban Age”.
The proposition it offers is that the twenty-first century, with more than half of the world’s population living in cities, will be the urban age with the emerging conurbations as the vehicles for addressing the major challenges that face the world today; extending economic prosperity, promoting environmental sustainability and reducing poverty. But, that cities lack a coherent roadmap to realise the promise of the urban age…. “our primary conclusion is that there are broad disconnects between urban change on the one hand and urban policy and practice on the other. These disconnects are magnified at national and multinational levels where specialised and one dimensional policies dominate. As a result, the promise of cities is systematically undermined….in an urban age, the battles to achieve the highest aspirations of the twenty-first century and beyond will be fought – and won or lost – in our cities.
• There is a sharp disconnect between the challenges of the urban age and our current set of urban solutions
• There is a disconnect between policies intended to promote economic growth, policies designed to advance environmental sustainability and policies aimed at reducing poverty
• There is a disconnect between the complexity of challenges and the narrow responses that dominate urban policy
• There is a disconnect between the artificial geography of government , and the real footprint of the economy and environment
• In the twenty first century, markets are moving quickly to reshape and remake urban places. Yet urban policy and urban governance appears stuck somewhere in the twentieth century. The lag between transformational change and governmental action is immense.
These really apply to us - so how do we address these issues, these disconnects? The authors suggest a new urban agenda – starting with the people responsible for delivering the urban agenda – moving from specialists and technicians “who interpret and strive to fix discrete problems such as traffic congestion or slum housing” to generalists “who see the connections between challenges and who work to devise and implement policies that advance multiple objectives simultaneously”. “Imagine networks of city builders who cut across disciplines, programmes, practices and professions. These city builders will perfect new ways of ;’reading’ cities, deploy new metrics and measures to diagnose city assets and ailments, and gauge city progress” “….we need to arm city builders with programmes and policies that champion integration and holistic thinking.”
To produce such people we need to find institutional vehicles that can deliver multidisciplinary learning, our existing academia is just too fraught with “artificial divisions between separate schools, professions curricula, departments and self-defeating fiefdoms:” “Making linkages and connections between policies must be the norm not the exception reinforced by incentives and new structures and systems. “The vertical silo driven bureaucracies of the past century need to be laid horizontal. In many respects, closing the divide between related but separately administered policies is as important as bridging the partisan and ideological divides that characterise so many countries and undermine urban success.”
“We see today that what makes cities vital in the twenty-first century are those very tributes of urbanism that we destroyed in the twentieth century. Complexity. Density. Diversity of people and cultures. The convergence of the physical environment at multiple scales. The messy intersection of activities. A variance of distinctive designs. The layering of the old and new. These are the physical elements that advance competitive, sustainable and inclusive cities.”
Cheers, neil
PS – the good news appears to be that Wits has no intention of demolishing the Tower of Light (although some of the sources of that story emanated from Wits itself!) I received a wonderful letter from the Deputy Chancellor, Finance and Operations “We therefore take extreme offence at such piece of unfounded and malicious disinformation being circulated in your otherwise admirable newsletter.
I would like to request an absolute groveling apology sent on the same subscription list - I say “absolutely groveling” as you have not only carelessly impugned our planning and heritage intentions on the basis of zilch evidence or factuality, but you have also insulted the intelligence of an organization that stands as an uncompromising beacon of knowledge in our city and society.”
The article was neither unfounded nor malicious, but the heritage lobby is so delighted at your assurances that I happily prostrate myself before you!
Friday, July 11, 2008
Towers; Telkom, Light and Orlando Citichat 11 July 2008
CITICHAT 27/2008 - 11 July 2008
Tall Tales of Towers
Telkom’s Sosatie
Construction of the Hillbrow Tower was started in1968 and it was completed in 1971. It has a height of 269 metres and the contract price was R2 million! At the top of the tower there were 6 public floors one of which housed a revolving restaurant, Heinrich’s Restaurant. There was also the Grill Room on a non-revolving floor. It was open to the public until 1981 when it was closed “for security reasons”. I’m sure that many of you will know that there have been numerous attempts to get Telkom to allow the tower to be used in the way for which it was originally designed, as are most such towers throughout the world – for the sheer experience of being whisked hundreds of metres in the air, getting out nervously on cantilevered observation floors and having a mind-blowing 360o view of the city and, maybe, a meal or snacks in the air. It is a completely different feel to going up 50 floors of the Carlton Centre to its Skyfloor where one has the appreciation of 49 equally sized floors supporting you underneath. I remember going up both the Hillbrow and Auckland Park towers aeons ago and being so awed by the panorama they offered. I have subsequently been up towers in many cities in various parts of the world. In fact, in Auckland, a couple of years back, I was startled by a body hurtling down past the outside of the observation floor where I was standing – but it was only a bungee jumper. Only, those people are quite nuts! Equally nuts are the people who take vertical rides above the observation floors in Las Vegas (the tower there has all the usual - soaring central core and observation floors mushrooming out high in the sky with restaurants, etc but also the ability to get onto the roof above the observation pod and to be strapped into seats that are then catapulted up the main antenna.) I believe, like most things in Vegas, the whole thing is false, it is just a full size mock up that doesn’t actually act as a telecommunications tower! But let me tell you, the screams from the folks rocketing up the spire hundreds of metres above terra firma are not false! So, I chickened out, so!
There have also been attempts to get the Hillbrow Tower painted in some African style, some years ago a great one was proposed in a zebra pattern. Telkom, with the unimaginative, ponderous attitude of a typical parastatal of the previous regime, has been unmoved and come up with the traditional lame excuses – “it would be a security risk”; “there is no way that people could be evacuated in an emergency”, etc etc. All a load of rubbish! The tower was open to the public for a decade, operating quite safely and was designed to include emergency evacuation. Such towers are a major tourist drawcard in cities all over the world, many much higher – Toronto’s is three times the height of Hillbrow’s.
Well, the reason for this tale is that there has been a public meeting (which I only heard about but I gather there was a notice in the Star) for the citizens of the city to see and make comment on Telkom’s proposals to utilise the Tower for their ‘visual support of 2010’. Now that 2010 is looming large, the organisation has decided that the tower could be well used in marketing the World Cup by adorning it with a giant soccer ball structure. I actually don’t think that it is such a bad idea in principle. We are spending billions of rand in preparing for the event and a soccer ball high in the sky to catch the attention of hundreds of millions of watchers throughout the world during TV transmissions seems OK to me. It is the sort of brash, in your face marketing that seems to be what today’s world loves. But someone who went to the presentation (at which there were less attendees than the fingers on your hand) said that the ‘ball’ is to be built around the central concrete core below the section of offices and viewing floors. One’s imagination translates that into an image of a giant kebab or sosatie, the tower core skewering a giant football with a number of additional pieces above the football like slices of pineapple and dried apricot! Why doesn’t the media carry pictures of the proposals so we can all see and get real comment on what we have to live with for the next however many years? Would be a change from the pictures we are daily subjected to of politicians and officials in disgrace!
Someone suggested that a great alternative would be an illuminated soccer ball with a greater diameter that that of Ponte, nestling on top of the signage at the top of the building. Now that would make a statement!
The Wits’ Column
Turning to another, albeit much smaller tower, there is a story doing the rounds that Wits is planning to demolish the 72 year old ‘Tower of Light’ on their west campus. Towers of Light were particularly popular in the 1930s at international exhibitions when “electrification remained the magical ingredient of modern society, equivalent in its expressive qualities to the fountains of Baroque Rome.” (Clive Chipkin – ‘Johannesburg Style’). This was the case with our own Tower of Light built for the 1936 Empire Exhibition.
The west campus of Wits was previously Milner Park and the venue for the Rand Show from 1907 to 1984. It was organised by the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society which was established in 1894. The first show was opened by Paul Kruger in that year when the City was just eight years old and the Show was repeated in the two succeeding years. However, the Anglo-Boer War brought an end to the Show and it was only re-instated in 1907 and moved from its previous site “between the old Fort and Milner Park” to Milner Park itself, at that time described as “an old brickfield pockmarked by large holes left by excavations.” The “Rand Show” became quite an institution in Johannesburg’s early life. In 1936 the Show was converted into the Empire Exhibition which coincided with the City’s 50th anniversary. Such exhibitions were typical initiatives that were intended to boost trade and bolster popular support in this case for the British colonial empire. HJ Crocker, in the ‘Almanac’ of October 1936 provided his impressions of the exhibition grounds before they were opened to the public: “A picture offered itself of the tens of thousands of folk of all ages and divers races who would soon throng this miniature city, peopling the roads and terraces and pavilions, crowding into hours and days a fuller realisation of British Africa and its Commonwealth relationships than could be obtained in a lifetime of office and workshop and field and home” A miniature city of pavilions with an eclectic, and contentious, mix of architectural styles. The Department of Architecture at Wits, on the other side of Yale Road, greeted the ‘modernistic explosion of the Empire Exhibition’ with ‘deafening silence’ according to Chipkin, who goes on to say “ For at such close quarters the apostles of the Modern Movement were forced to confront the noise and energy, the impurities and the jumble of ideas exhibited on a hundred acres of show-ground dominated by the modernistic and retrospective architecture which they condemned”
Clive Chipkin gives a broader idea of the era: “In 1936 much of Johannesburg’s population was diverted by the Empire Exhibition. The city was fifty years old, and in its golden jubilee year the heart of Johannesburg was illuminated with floodlit buildings and decorated with triumphal arches studded with lights and draped with Empire flags. The main thoroughfares and the old Market Square were ablaze with golden light. But not the slumyards and remote black townships. There were no lights there, no electricity – only braziers in winter, candles and paraffin lamps. The surrounding veld was dark at night as it had been before gold discoveries.” Ironically, according to historian Sue Krige, the city couldn’t supply sufficient power for the 1936 Empire Exhibition including its Tower of Light, additional supply had to be bought by the City from VFP (the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Company). The Victoria Falls company supplying power to the Empire Exhibition! - Mad Bob would have platzed!
An additional irony of the 1936 Empire Exhibition, a truly tragic one, was that, whilst the British Empire were celebrating their colonial prowess and demonstrating the extent of their colonial rule, 1936 was the year that Generals Smuts and Hertzog “laid out the site-works of the apartheid structures of the future……the year of the infamous Native Land and Trust Act and Representation of Natives Act which destroyed the Cape franchise for blacks.”
The centrepiece or focal point of the layout of gardens and buildings and pathways of the Empire Exhibition was The Tower of Light. Although only 60 metres tall, when illuminated, it could be “seen at night from anywhere on the Rand and (is) a wonderful landmark to airmen flying after dark”. It was placed on the north-south axis of the Exhibition’s “Avenue of Prosperity” which was at right angles to Empire Road (Chipkin states that the latter was “fortuitously named ten years earlier ‘through love and regard for the British Empire”). Designed by Professor G.E.Pearse its positive impact on the viewers is described by Gerhard–Mark van der Waal ‘From Mining Camp to Metropolis’: “the dynamics of the high cylinder with its fins must have grabbed the attention of the public at the time. Like most other buildings in the grounds, it was reminiscent of the constructions of the Chicago World Fair of 1933 where ‘progress’ was the leitmotif.”
The Parktown & Westcliff Heritage Trust refer to its significance as:
• A landmark in the City, familiar to generations of South Africans who visited the Rand Easter Show
• It meant to earlier generations what the Brixton and Hillbrow Towers meant to later generations. It was the symbol of Johannesburg’s and also South Africa’s achievement and vision.
• It was designed to be lit as a shing beacon and could be seen across the Reef
• It was not acclaimed by the architects of the time as an important Modern Movement structure despite its simple lines and use of the most common of materials – concrete and steel. While the academics kept silent it was acclaimed by the people who associated it with a pleasurable outing and annual event they enjoyed. So it is a landmark in time as well as space.
• It was elected in 1986 as one of the 100 structures recording Johannesburg’s history.
• The Empire Exhibition was held in Johannesburg in 1936 as part of the City’s Golden Jubilee. The Tower of Light is the only significant structure of that important milestone in one of the World’s youngest cities.
Wits will mess with this one at its peril - don’t think they should even think about it, - it’s not theirs, it’s the city’s!
Orlando’s Coolers
Maybe it was the lack of ability to supply the Empire Exhibition that drove the then City Council to consider the construction of another power station this one to be known as the Orlando Power Station. Historian Sue Krige records that construction actually began in 1939 but its completion was delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War. When completed it was regarded as an ultra-modern station with state of the art turbines, using high temperatures and pressures, with greater efficiencies than anything else we had. By 1945, ‘the high thermal efficiency’ of Orlando meant that it could supply a steady load and it became the main City power plant but was eventually overtaken by the building of Kelvin A and Kelvin B Power Stations between 1953 and 1970.
So what is the tall tale about Orlando? Well, as part of its giant conversion to shopping malls et al, to be known as Orlando E’khaya, the two distinctively branded cooling towers have been turned into the “World’s First Vertical Adventure Centre in a pair of Cooling Towers”. The landmark cooling towers have been turned into a permanent adventure centre that offers a lift ride up the 100 metre tall west tower, a viewing platform ride, a swing inside the tower, abseiling and bungee jumping – opens this Sat from 10.00 and then every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10h00 to 17h00.
So, I’ll see you at the end of a bungee – well, I think not, but you go for it! regards, neil
PS – I received the following note from Eric Itzkin, the Deputy Director of Immovable Heritage in the City’s Directorate Arts, Culture & Heritage,
Department of Community Development
“Just to clarify, the statue of Captain von Brandis was the first public sculpture of an historical figure to appear in Johannesburg. The artwork by David MacGregor was in fact unveiled in 1965, not 1894. The earlier date appeared in an otherwise excellent report in The Star (30 June 2008), presumably the source for this snippet of misinformation. (it was!)
Interestingly, the von Brandis staue was initially conceived as part of the Miner's Monument in Braamfontein, developed by the same artist for the Chamber of Mines. Fortunately, the two artworks were split into separate projects.”
Tall Tales of Towers
Telkom’s Sosatie
Construction of the Hillbrow Tower was started in1968 and it was completed in 1971. It has a height of 269 metres and the contract price was R2 million! At the top of the tower there were 6 public floors one of which housed a revolving restaurant, Heinrich’s Restaurant. There was also the Grill Room on a non-revolving floor. It was open to the public until 1981 when it was closed “for security reasons”. I’m sure that many of you will know that there have been numerous attempts to get Telkom to allow the tower to be used in the way for which it was originally designed, as are most such towers throughout the world – for the sheer experience of being whisked hundreds of metres in the air, getting out nervously on cantilevered observation floors and having a mind-blowing 360o view of the city and, maybe, a meal or snacks in the air. It is a completely different feel to going up 50 floors of the Carlton Centre to its Skyfloor where one has the appreciation of 49 equally sized floors supporting you underneath. I remember going up both the Hillbrow and Auckland Park towers aeons ago and being so awed by the panorama they offered. I have subsequently been up towers in many cities in various parts of the world. In fact, in Auckland, a couple of years back, I was startled by a body hurtling down past the outside of the observation floor where I was standing – but it was only a bungee jumper. Only, those people are quite nuts! Equally nuts are the people who take vertical rides above the observation floors in Las Vegas (the tower there has all the usual - soaring central core and observation floors mushrooming out high in the sky with restaurants, etc but also the ability to get onto the roof above the observation pod and to be strapped into seats that are then catapulted up the main antenna.) I believe, like most things in Vegas, the whole thing is false, it is just a full size mock up that doesn’t actually act as a telecommunications tower! But let me tell you, the screams from the folks rocketing up the spire hundreds of metres above terra firma are not false! So, I chickened out, so!
There have also been attempts to get the Hillbrow Tower painted in some African style, some years ago a great one was proposed in a zebra pattern. Telkom, with the unimaginative, ponderous attitude of a typical parastatal of the previous regime, has been unmoved and come up with the traditional lame excuses – “it would be a security risk”; “there is no way that people could be evacuated in an emergency”, etc etc. All a load of rubbish! The tower was open to the public for a decade, operating quite safely and was designed to include emergency evacuation. Such towers are a major tourist drawcard in cities all over the world, many much higher – Toronto’s is three times the height of Hillbrow’s.
Well, the reason for this tale is that there has been a public meeting (which I only heard about but I gather there was a notice in the Star) for the citizens of the city to see and make comment on Telkom’s proposals to utilise the Tower for their ‘visual support of 2010’. Now that 2010 is looming large, the organisation has decided that the tower could be well used in marketing the World Cup by adorning it with a giant soccer ball structure. I actually don’t think that it is such a bad idea in principle. We are spending billions of rand in preparing for the event and a soccer ball high in the sky to catch the attention of hundreds of millions of watchers throughout the world during TV transmissions seems OK to me. It is the sort of brash, in your face marketing that seems to be what today’s world loves. But someone who went to the presentation (at which there were less attendees than the fingers on your hand) said that the ‘ball’ is to be built around the central concrete core below the section of offices and viewing floors. One’s imagination translates that into an image of a giant kebab or sosatie, the tower core skewering a giant football with a number of additional pieces above the football like slices of pineapple and dried apricot! Why doesn’t the media carry pictures of the proposals so we can all see and get real comment on what we have to live with for the next however many years? Would be a change from the pictures we are daily subjected to of politicians and officials in disgrace!
Someone suggested that a great alternative would be an illuminated soccer ball with a greater diameter that that of Ponte, nestling on top of the signage at the top of the building. Now that would make a statement!
The Wits’ Column
Turning to another, albeit much smaller tower, there is a story doing the rounds that Wits is planning to demolish the 72 year old ‘Tower of Light’ on their west campus. Towers of Light were particularly popular in the 1930s at international exhibitions when “electrification remained the magical ingredient of modern society, equivalent in its expressive qualities to the fountains of Baroque Rome.” (Clive Chipkin – ‘Johannesburg Style’). This was the case with our own Tower of Light built for the 1936 Empire Exhibition.
The west campus of Wits was previously Milner Park and the venue for the Rand Show from 1907 to 1984. It was organised by the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society which was established in 1894. The first show was opened by Paul Kruger in that year when the City was just eight years old and the Show was repeated in the two succeeding years. However, the Anglo-Boer War brought an end to the Show and it was only re-instated in 1907 and moved from its previous site “between the old Fort and Milner Park” to Milner Park itself, at that time described as “an old brickfield pockmarked by large holes left by excavations.” The “Rand Show” became quite an institution in Johannesburg’s early life. In 1936 the Show was converted into the Empire Exhibition which coincided with the City’s 50th anniversary. Such exhibitions were typical initiatives that were intended to boost trade and bolster popular support in this case for the British colonial empire. HJ Crocker, in the ‘Almanac’ of October 1936 provided his impressions of the exhibition grounds before they were opened to the public: “A picture offered itself of the tens of thousands of folk of all ages and divers races who would soon throng this miniature city, peopling the roads and terraces and pavilions, crowding into hours and days a fuller realisation of British Africa and its Commonwealth relationships than could be obtained in a lifetime of office and workshop and field and home” A miniature city of pavilions with an eclectic, and contentious, mix of architectural styles. The Department of Architecture at Wits, on the other side of Yale Road, greeted the ‘modernistic explosion of the Empire Exhibition’ with ‘deafening silence’ according to Chipkin, who goes on to say “ For at such close quarters the apostles of the Modern Movement were forced to confront the noise and energy, the impurities and the jumble of ideas exhibited on a hundred acres of show-ground dominated by the modernistic and retrospective architecture which they condemned”
Clive Chipkin gives a broader idea of the era: “In 1936 much of Johannesburg’s population was diverted by the Empire Exhibition. The city was fifty years old, and in its golden jubilee year the heart of Johannesburg was illuminated with floodlit buildings and decorated with triumphal arches studded with lights and draped with Empire flags. The main thoroughfares and the old Market Square were ablaze with golden light. But not the slumyards and remote black townships. There were no lights there, no electricity – only braziers in winter, candles and paraffin lamps. The surrounding veld was dark at night as it had been before gold discoveries.” Ironically, according to historian Sue Krige, the city couldn’t supply sufficient power for the 1936 Empire Exhibition including its Tower of Light, additional supply had to be bought by the City from VFP (the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Company). The Victoria Falls company supplying power to the Empire Exhibition! - Mad Bob would have platzed!
An additional irony of the 1936 Empire Exhibition, a truly tragic one, was that, whilst the British Empire were celebrating their colonial prowess and demonstrating the extent of their colonial rule, 1936 was the year that Generals Smuts and Hertzog “laid out the site-works of the apartheid structures of the future……the year of the infamous Native Land and Trust Act and Representation of Natives Act which destroyed the Cape franchise for blacks.”
The centrepiece or focal point of the layout of gardens and buildings and pathways of the Empire Exhibition was The Tower of Light. Although only 60 metres tall, when illuminated, it could be “seen at night from anywhere on the Rand and (is) a wonderful landmark to airmen flying after dark”. It was placed on the north-south axis of the Exhibition’s “Avenue of Prosperity” which was at right angles to Empire Road (Chipkin states that the latter was “fortuitously named ten years earlier ‘through love and regard for the British Empire”). Designed by Professor G.E.Pearse its positive impact on the viewers is described by Gerhard–Mark van der Waal ‘From Mining Camp to Metropolis’: “the dynamics of the high cylinder with its fins must have grabbed the attention of the public at the time. Like most other buildings in the grounds, it was reminiscent of the constructions of the Chicago World Fair of 1933 where ‘progress’ was the leitmotif.”
The Parktown & Westcliff Heritage Trust refer to its significance as:
• A landmark in the City, familiar to generations of South Africans who visited the Rand Easter Show
• It meant to earlier generations what the Brixton and Hillbrow Towers meant to later generations. It was the symbol of Johannesburg’s and also South Africa’s achievement and vision.
• It was designed to be lit as a shing beacon and could be seen across the Reef
• It was not acclaimed by the architects of the time as an important Modern Movement structure despite its simple lines and use of the most common of materials – concrete and steel. While the academics kept silent it was acclaimed by the people who associated it with a pleasurable outing and annual event they enjoyed. So it is a landmark in time as well as space.
• It was elected in 1986 as one of the 100 structures recording Johannesburg’s history.
• The Empire Exhibition was held in Johannesburg in 1936 as part of the City’s Golden Jubilee. The Tower of Light is the only significant structure of that important milestone in one of the World’s youngest cities.
Wits will mess with this one at its peril - don’t think they should even think about it, - it’s not theirs, it’s the city’s!
Orlando’s Coolers
Maybe it was the lack of ability to supply the Empire Exhibition that drove the then City Council to consider the construction of another power station this one to be known as the Orlando Power Station. Historian Sue Krige records that construction actually began in 1939 but its completion was delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War. When completed it was regarded as an ultra-modern station with state of the art turbines, using high temperatures and pressures, with greater efficiencies than anything else we had. By 1945, ‘the high thermal efficiency’ of Orlando meant that it could supply a steady load and it became the main City power plant but was eventually overtaken by the building of Kelvin A and Kelvin B Power Stations between 1953 and 1970.
So what is the tall tale about Orlando? Well, as part of its giant conversion to shopping malls et al, to be known as Orlando E’khaya, the two distinctively branded cooling towers have been turned into the “World’s First Vertical Adventure Centre in a pair of Cooling Towers”. The landmark cooling towers have been turned into a permanent adventure centre that offers a lift ride up the 100 metre tall west tower, a viewing platform ride, a swing inside the tower, abseiling and bungee jumping – opens this Sat from 10.00 and then every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10h00 to 17h00.
So, I’ll see you at the end of a bungee – well, I think not, but you go for it! regards, neil
PS – I received the following note from Eric Itzkin, the Deputy Director of Immovable Heritage in the City’s Directorate Arts, Culture & Heritage,
Department of Community Development
“Just to clarify, the statue of Captain von Brandis was the first public sculpture of an historical figure to appear in Johannesburg. The artwork by David MacGregor was in fact unveiled in 1965, not 1894. The earlier date appeared in an otherwise excellent report in The Star (30 June 2008), presumably the source for this snippet of misinformation. (it was!)
Interestingly, the von Brandis staue was initially conceived as part of the Miner's Monument in Braamfontein, developed by the same artist for the Chamber of Mines. Fortunately, the two artworks were split into separate projects.”
Towers - Telkom;Light;Orlando Citichat 11 July 2008
CITICHAT 27/2008
11 July 2008
Tall Tales
Telkom’s Sosatie
Construction of the Hillbrow Tower was started in1968 and it was completed in 1971. It has a height of 269 metres and the contract price was R2 million! At the top of the tower there were 6 public floors one of which housed a revolving restaurant, Heinrich’s Restaurant. There was also the Grill Room on a non-revolving floor. It was open to the public until 1981 when it was closed “for security reasons”. I’m sure that many of you will know that there have been numerous attempts to get Telkom to allow the tower to be used in the way for which it was originally designed, as are most such towers throughout the world – for the sheer experience of being whisked hundreds of metres in the air, getting out nervously on cantilevered observation floors and having a mind-blowing 360o view of the city and, maybe, a meal or snacks in the air. It is a completely different feel to going up 50 floors of the Carlton Centre to its Skyfloor where one has the appreciation of 49 equally sized floors supporting you underneath. I remember going up both the Hillbrow and Auckland Park towers aeons ago and being so awed by the panorama they offered. I have subsequently been up towers in many cities in various parts of the world. In fact, in Auckland, a couple of years back, I was startled by a body hurtling down past the outside of the observation floor where I was standing – but it was only a bungee jumper. Only, those people are quite nuts! Equally nuts are the people who take vertical rides above the observation floors in Las Vegas (the tower there has all the usual - soaring central core and observation floors mushrooming out high in the sky with restaurants, etc but also the ability to get onto the roof above the observation pod and to be strapped into seats that are then catapulted up the main antenna.) I believe, like most things in Vegas, the whole thing is false, it is just a full size mock up that doesn’t actually act as a telecommunications tower! But let me tell you, the screams from the folks rocketing up the spire hundreds of metres above terra firma are not false! So, I chickened out, so!
There have also been attempts to get the Hillbrow Tower painted in some African style, some years ago a great one was proposed in a zebra pattern. Telkom, with the unimaginative, ponderous attitude of a typical parastatal of the previous regime, has been unmoved and come up with the traditional lame excuses – “it would be a security risk”; “there is no way that people could be evacuated in an emergency”, etc etc. All a load of rubbish! The tower was open to the public for a decade, operating quite safely and was designed to include emergency evacuation. Such towers are a major tourist drawcard in cities all over the world, many much higher – Toronto’s is three times the height of Hillbrow’s.
Well, the reason for this tale is that there has been a public meeting (which I only heard about but I gather there was a notice in the Star) for the citizens of the city to see and make comment on Telkom’s proposals to utilise the Tower for their ‘visual support of 2010’. Now that 2010 is looming large, the organisation has decided that the tower could be well used in marketing the World Cup by adorning it with a giant soccer ball structure. I actually don’t think that it is such a bad idea in principle. We are spending billions of rand in preparing for the event and a soccer ball high in the sky to catch the attention of hundreds of millions of watchers throughout the world during TV transmissions seems OK to me. It is the sort of brash, in your face marketing that seems to be what today’s world loves. But someone who went to the presentation (at which there were less attendees than the fingers on your hand) said that the ‘ball’ is to be built around the central concrete core below the section of offices and viewing floors. One’s imagination translates that into an image of a giant kebab or sosatie, the tower core skewering a giant football with a number of additional pieces above the football like slices of pineapple and dried apricot! Why doesn’t the media carry pictures of the proposals so we can all see and get real comment on what we have to live with for the next however many years? Would be a change from the pictures we are daily subjected to of politicians and officials in disgrace!
Someone suggested that a great alternative would be an illuminated soccer ball with a greater diameter that that of Ponte, nestling on top of the signage at the top of the building. Now that would make a statement!
The Wits’ Column
Turning to another, albeit much smaller tower, there is a story doing the rounds that Wits is planning to demolish the 72 year old ‘Tower of Light’ on their west campus. Towers of Light were particularly popular in the 1930s at international exhibitions when “electrification remained the magical ingredient of modern society, equivalent in its expressive qualities to the fountains of Baroque Rome.” (Clive Chipkin – ‘Johannesburg Style’). This was the case with our own Tower of Light built for the 1936 Empire Exhibition.
The west campus of Wits was previously Milner Park and the venue for the Rand Show from 1907 to 1984. It was organised by the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society which was established in 1894. The first show was opened by Paul Kruger in that year when the City was just eight years old and the Show was repeated in the two succeeding years. However, the Anglo-Boer War brought an end to the Show and it was only re-instated in 1907 and moved from its previous site “between the old Fort and Milner Park” to Milner Park itself, at that time described as “an old brickfield pockmarked by large holes left by excavations.” The “Rand Show” became quite an institution in Johannesburg’s early life. In 1936 the Show was converted into the Empire Exhibition which coincided with the City’s 50th anniversary. Such exhibitions were typical initiatives that were intended to boost trade and bolster popular support in this case for the British colonial empire. HJ Crocker, in the ‘Almanac’ of October 1936 provided his impressions of the exhibition grounds before they were opened to the public: “A picture offered itself of the tens of thousands of folk of all ages and divers races who would soon throng this miniature city, peopling the roads and terraces and pavilions, crowding into hours and days a fuller realisation of British Africa and its Commonwealth relationships than could be obtained in a lifetime of office and workshop and field and home” A miniature city of pavilions with an eclectic, and contentious, mix of architectural styles. The Department of Architecture at Wits, on the other side of Yale Road, greeted the ‘modernistic explosion of the Empire Exhibition’ with ‘deafening silence’ according to Chipkin, who goes on to say “ For at such close quarters the apostles of the Modern Movement were forced to confront the noise and energy, the impurities and the jumble of ideas exhibited on a hundred acres of show-ground dominated by the modernistic and retrospective architecture which they condemned”
Clive Chipkin gives a broader idea of the era: “In 1936 much of Johannesburg’s population was diverted by the Empire Exhibition. The city was fifty years old, and in its golden jubilee year the heart of Johannesburg was illuminated with floodlit buildings and decorated with triumphal arches studded with lights and draped with Empire flags. The main thoroughfares and the old Market Square were ablaze with golden light. But not the slumyards and remote black townships. There were no lights there, no electricity – only braziers in winter, candles and paraffin lamps. The surrounding veld was dark at night as it had been before gold discoveries.” Ironically, according to historian Sue Krige, the city couldn’t supply sufficient power for the 1936 Empire Exhibition including its Tower of Light, additional supply had to be bought by the City from VFP (the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Company). The Victoria Falls company supplying power to the Empire Exhibition! - Mad Bob would have platzed!
An additional irony of the 1936 Empire Exhibition, a truly tragic one, was that, whilst the British Empire were celebrating their colonial prowess and demonstrating the extent of their colonial rule, 1936 was the year that Generals Smuts and Hertzog “laid out the site-works of the apartheid structures of the future……the year of the infamous Native Land and Trust Act and Representation of Natives Act which destroyed the Cape franchise for blacks.”
The centrepiece or focal point of the layout of gardens and buildings and pathways of the Empire Exhibition was The Tower of Light. Although only 60 metres tall, when illuminated, it could be “seen at night from anywhere on the Rand and (is) a wonderful landmark to airmen flying after dark”. It was placed on the north-south axis of the Exhibition’s “Avenue of Prosperity” which was at right angles to Empire Road (Chipkin states that the latter was “fortuitously named ten years earlier ‘through love and regard for the British Empire”). Designed by Professor G.E.Pearse its positive impact on the viewers is described by Gerhard–Mark van der Waal ‘From Mining Camp to Metropolis’: “the dynamics of the high cylinder with its fins must have grabbed the attention of the public at the time. Like most other buildings in the grounds, it was reminiscent of the constructions of the Chicago World Fair of 1933 where ‘progress’ was the leitmotif.”
The Parktown & Westcliff Heritage Trust refer to its significance as:
• A landmark in the City, familiar to generations of South Africans who visited the Rand Easter Show
• It meant to earlier generations what the Brixton and Hillbrow Towers meant to later generations. It was the symbol of Johannesburg’s and also South Africa’s achievement and vision.
• It was designed to be lit as a shing beacon and could be seen across the Reef
• It was not acclaimed by the architects of the time as an important Modern Movement structure despite its simple lines and use of the most common of materials – concrete and steel. While the academics kept silent it was acclaimed by the people who associated it with a pleasurable outing and annual event they enjoyed. So it is a landmark in time as well as space.
• It was elected in 1986 as one of the 100 structures recording Johannesburg’s history.
• The Empire Exhibition was held in Johannesburg in 1936 as part of the City’s Golden Jubilee. The Tower of Light is the only significant structure of that important milestone in one of the World’s youngest cities.
Wits will mess with this one at its peril - don’t think they should even think about it, - it’s not theirs, it’s the city’s!
Orlando’s Coolers
Maybe it was the lack of ability to supply the Empire Exhibition that drove the then City Council to consider the construction of another power station this one to be known as the Orlando Power Station. Historian Sue Krige records that construction actually began in 1939 but its completion was delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War. When completed it was regarded as an ultra-modern station with state of the art turbines, using high temperatures and pressures, with greater efficiencies than anything else we had. By 1945, ‘the high thermal efficiency’ of Orlando meant that it could supply a steady load and it became the main City power plant but was eventually overtaken by the building of Kelvin A and Kelvin B Power Stations between 1953 and 1970.
So what is the tall tale about Orlando? Well, as part of its giant conversion to shopping malls et al, to be known as Orlando E’khaya, the two distinctively branded cooling towers have been turned into the “World’s First Vertical Adventure Centre in a pair of Cooling Towers”. The landmark cooling towers have been turned into a permanent adventure centre that offers a lift ride up the 100 metre tall west tower, a viewing platform ride, a swing inside the tower, abseiling and bungee jumping – opens this Sat from 10.00 and then every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10h00 to 17h00.
So, I’ll see you at the end of a bungee – well, I think not, but you go for it! regards, neil
PS – I received the following note from Eric Itzkin, the Deputy Director of Immovable Heritage in the City’s Directorate Arts, Culture & Heritage,
Department of Community Development
“Just to clarify, the statue of Captain von Brandis was the first public sculpture of an historical figure to appear in Johannesburg. The artwork by David MacGregor was in fact unveiled in 1965, not 1894. The earlier date appeared in an otherwise excellent report in The Star (30 June 2008), presumably the source for this snippet of misinformation. (it was!)
Interestingly, the von Brandis staue was initially conceived as part of the Miner's Monument in Braamfontein, developed by the same artist for the Chamber of Mines. Fortunately, the two artworks were split into separate projects.”
11 July 2008
Tall Tales
Telkom’s Sosatie
Construction of the Hillbrow Tower was started in1968 and it was completed in 1971. It has a height of 269 metres and the contract price was R2 million! At the top of the tower there were 6 public floors one of which housed a revolving restaurant, Heinrich’s Restaurant. There was also the Grill Room on a non-revolving floor. It was open to the public until 1981 when it was closed “for security reasons”. I’m sure that many of you will know that there have been numerous attempts to get Telkom to allow the tower to be used in the way for which it was originally designed, as are most such towers throughout the world – for the sheer experience of being whisked hundreds of metres in the air, getting out nervously on cantilevered observation floors and having a mind-blowing 360o view of the city and, maybe, a meal or snacks in the air. It is a completely different feel to going up 50 floors of the Carlton Centre to its Skyfloor where one has the appreciation of 49 equally sized floors supporting you underneath. I remember going up both the Hillbrow and Auckland Park towers aeons ago and being so awed by the panorama they offered. I have subsequently been up towers in many cities in various parts of the world. In fact, in Auckland, a couple of years back, I was startled by a body hurtling down past the outside of the observation floor where I was standing – but it was only a bungee jumper. Only, those people are quite nuts! Equally nuts are the people who take vertical rides above the observation floors in Las Vegas (the tower there has all the usual - soaring central core and observation floors mushrooming out high in the sky with restaurants, etc but also the ability to get onto the roof above the observation pod and to be strapped into seats that are then catapulted up the main antenna.) I believe, like most things in Vegas, the whole thing is false, it is just a full size mock up that doesn’t actually act as a telecommunications tower! But let me tell you, the screams from the folks rocketing up the spire hundreds of metres above terra firma are not false! So, I chickened out, so!
There have also been attempts to get the Hillbrow Tower painted in some African style, some years ago a great one was proposed in a zebra pattern. Telkom, with the unimaginative, ponderous attitude of a typical parastatal of the previous regime, has been unmoved and come up with the traditional lame excuses – “it would be a security risk”; “there is no way that people could be evacuated in an emergency”, etc etc. All a load of rubbish! The tower was open to the public for a decade, operating quite safely and was designed to include emergency evacuation. Such towers are a major tourist drawcard in cities all over the world, many much higher – Toronto’s is three times the height of Hillbrow’s.
Well, the reason for this tale is that there has been a public meeting (which I only heard about but I gather there was a notice in the Star) for the citizens of the city to see and make comment on Telkom’s proposals to utilise the Tower for their ‘visual support of 2010’. Now that 2010 is looming large, the organisation has decided that the tower could be well used in marketing the World Cup by adorning it with a giant soccer ball structure. I actually don’t think that it is such a bad idea in principle. We are spending billions of rand in preparing for the event and a soccer ball high in the sky to catch the attention of hundreds of millions of watchers throughout the world during TV transmissions seems OK to me. It is the sort of brash, in your face marketing that seems to be what today’s world loves. But someone who went to the presentation (at which there were less attendees than the fingers on your hand) said that the ‘ball’ is to be built around the central concrete core below the section of offices and viewing floors. One’s imagination translates that into an image of a giant kebab or sosatie, the tower core skewering a giant football with a number of additional pieces above the football like slices of pineapple and dried apricot! Why doesn’t the media carry pictures of the proposals so we can all see and get real comment on what we have to live with for the next however many years? Would be a change from the pictures we are daily subjected to of politicians and officials in disgrace!
Someone suggested that a great alternative would be an illuminated soccer ball with a greater diameter that that of Ponte, nestling on top of the signage at the top of the building. Now that would make a statement!
The Wits’ Column
Turning to another, albeit much smaller tower, there is a story doing the rounds that Wits is planning to demolish the 72 year old ‘Tower of Light’ on their west campus. Towers of Light were particularly popular in the 1930s at international exhibitions when “electrification remained the magical ingredient of modern society, equivalent in its expressive qualities to the fountains of Baroque Rome.” (Clive Chipkin – ‘Johannesburg Style’). This was the case with our own Tower of Light built for the 1936 Empire Exhibition.
The west campus of Wits was previously Milner Park and the venue for the Rand Show from 1907 to 1984. It was organised by the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society which was established in 1894. The first show was opened by Paul Kruger in that year when the City was just eight years old and the Show was repeated in the two succeeding years. However, the Anglo-Boer War brought an end to the Show and it was only re-instated in 1907 and moved from its previous site “between the old Fort and Milner Park” to Milner Park itself, at that time described as “an old brickfield pockmarked by large holes left by excavations.” The “Rand Show” became quite an institution in Johannesburg’s early life. In 1936 the Show was converted into the Empire Exhibition which coincided with the City’s 50th anniversary. Such exhibitions were typical initiatives that were intended to boost trade and bolster popular support in this case for the British colonial empire. HJ Crocker, in the ‘Almanac’ of October 1936 provided his impressions of the exhibition grounds before they were opened to the public: “A picture offered itself of the tens of thousands of folk of all ages and divers races who would soon throng this miniature city, peopling the roads and terraces and pavilions, crowding into hours and days a fuller realisation of British Africa and its Commonwealth relationships than could be obtained in a lifetime of office and workshop and field and home” A miniature city of pavilions with an eclectic, and contentious, mix of architectural styles. The Department of Architecture at Wits, on the other side of Yale Road, greeted the ‘modernistic explosion of the Empire Exhibition’ with ‘deafening silence’ according to Chipkin, who goes on to say “ For at such close quarters the apostles of the Modern Movement were forced to confront the noise and energy, the impurities and the jumble of ideas exhibited on a hundred acres of show-ground dominated by the modernistic and retrospective architecture which they condemned”
Clive Chipkin gives a broader idea of the era: “In 1936 much of Johannesburg’s population was diverted by the Empire Exhibition. The city was fifty years old, and in its golden jubilee year the heart of Johannesburg was illuminated with floodlit buildings and decorated with triumphal arches studded with lights and draped with Empire flags. The main thoroughfares and the old Market Square were ablaze with golden light. But not the slumyards and remote black townships. There were no lights there, no electricity – only braziers in winter, candles and paraffin lamps. The surrounding veld was dark at night as it had been before gold discoveries.” Ironically, according to historian Sue Krige, the city couldn’t supply sufficient power for the 1936 Empire Exhibition including its Tower of Light, additional supply had to be bought by the City from VFP (the Victoria Falls and Transvaal Power Company). The Victoria Falls company supplying power to the Empire Exhibition! - Mad Bob would have platzed!
An additional irony of the 1936 Empire Exhibition, a truly tragic one, was that, whilst the British Empire were celebrating their colonial prowess and demonstrating the extent of their colonial rule, 1936 was the year that Generals Smuts and Hertzog “laid out the site-works of the apartheid structures of the future……the year of the infamous Native Land and Trust Act and Representation of Natives Act which destroyed the Cape franchise for blacks.”
The centrepiece or focal point of the layout of gardens and buildings and pathways of the Empire Exhibition was The Tower of Light. Although only 60 metres tall, when illuminated, it could be “seen at night from anywhere on the Rand and (is) a wonderful landmark to airmen flying after dark”. It was placed on the north-south axis of the Exhibition’s “Avenue of Prosperity” which was at right angles to Empire Road (Chipkin states that the latter was “fortuitously named ten years earlier ‘through love and regard for the British Empire”). Designed by Professor G.E.Pearse its positive impact on the viewers is described by Gerhard–Mark van der Waal ‘From Mining Camp to Metropolis’: “the dynamics of the high cylinder with its fins must have grabbed the attention of the public at the time. Like most other buildings in the grounds, it was reminiscent of the constructions of the Chicago World Fair of 1933 where ‘progress’ was the leitmotif.”
The Parktown & Westcliff Heritage Trust refer to its significance as:
• A landmark in the City, familiar to generations of South Africans who visited the Rand Easter Show
• It meant to earlier generations what the Brixton and Hillbrow Towers meant to later generations. It was the symbol of Johannesburg’s and also South Africa’s achievement and vision.
• It was designed to be lit as a shing beacon and could be seen across the Reef
• It was not acclaimed by the architects of the time as an important Modern Movement structure despite its simple lines and use of the most common of materials – concrete and steel. While the academics kept silent it was acclaimed by the people who associated it with a pleasurable outing and annual event they enjoyed. So it is a landmark in time as well as space.
• It was elected in 1986 as one of the 100 structures recording Johannesburg’s history.
• The Empire Exhibition was held in Johannesburg in 1936 as part of the City’s Golden Jubilee. The Tower of Light is the only significant structure of that important milestone in one of the World’s youngest cities.
Wits will mess with this one at its peril - don’t think they should even think about it, - it’s not theirs, it’s the city’s!
Orlando’s Coolers
Maybe it was the lack of ability to supply the Empire Exhibition that drove the then City Council to consider the construction of another power station this one to be known as the Orlando Power Station. Historian Sue Krige records that construction actually began in 1939 but its completion was delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War. When completed it was regarded as an ultra-modern station with state of the art turbines, using high temperatures and pressures, with greater efficiencies than anything else we had. By 1945, ‘the high thermal efficiency’ of Orlando meant that it could supply a steady load and it became the main City power plant but was eventually overtaken by the building of Kelvin A and Kelvin B Power Stations between 1953 and 1970.
So what is the tall tale about Orlando? Well, as part of its giant conversion to shopping malls et al, to be known as Orlando E’khaya, the two distinctively branded cooling towers have been turned into the “World’s First Vertical Adventure Centre in a pair of Cooling Towers”. The landmark cooling towers have been turned into a permanent adventure centre that offers a lift ride up the 100 metre tall west tower, a viewing platform ride, a swing inside the tower, abseiling and bungee jumping – opens this Sat from 10.00 and then every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 10h00 to 17h00.
So, I’ll see you at the end of a bungee – well, I think not, but you go for it! regards, neil
PS – I received the following note from Eric Itzkin, the Deputy Director of Immovable Heritage in the City’s Directorate Arts, Culture & Heritage,
Department of Community Development
“Just to clarify, the statue of Captain von Brandis was the first public sculpture of an historical figure to appear in Johannesburg. The artwork by David MacGregor was in fact unveiled in 1965, not 1894. The earlier date appeared in an otherwise excellent report in The Star (30 June 2008), presumably the source for this snippet of misinformation. (it was!)
Interestingly, the von Brandis staue was initially conceived as part of the Miner's Monument in Braamfontein, developed by the same artist for the Chamber of Mines. Fortunately, the two artworks were split into separate projects.”
Friday, July 4, 2008
Courts, Constitutional and High Citichat 4 July 2008
CITICHAT 26/2008 - 4 July 2008
Couple of comments arising from last week’s Citichat on ‘Braamies’. Firstly, I had an irate call from a representative of one of the major corporates that has invested heavily in the upgrading and in their own accommodation in the area. He felt that I had painted too rosy a picture of conditions in the precinct and that maintenance and general urban management were sorely lacking. Secondly, had lunch at the “Nerina Trojon” on Wedneday – I wrote about this new eatery before it opened a couple of months back, but this was the first occasion I have had to visit it. Great décor, great food. Another value add to the Inner City and to Braamies in particular.
Heard Mike Mills (Classic FM) refer to Johannesburg Metro area recently as ‘trench city’. With new entrants into the telecommunications field ripping up roadsides for their cables which emerge like orange spaghetti at every pavement corner, trench city isn’t a bad description. Add to that the rapidly deteriorating roads, and the car dealers must be doing well in realignment and repairs to damaged suspensions to compensate for their drop in sales.
Courts, Citizenship and City Pride
Wrote about the Constitution Hill Trust just over a year ago when they had their inaugural fundraising dinner and was delighted to attend the second such dinner at the end of last week. The Trust was established with four basic objectives, the first two of which are:
(i) To secure the preservation and development of Constitution Hill as a heritage site symbolising our constitutional democracy.
(ii) to make provision for educational programmes to be conducted at or in respect of Constitution Hill for the purpose of educating South Africans on constitutionalism, human rights and democracy; and thereby to promote respect for constitutionalism, democracy and human rights – maybe we should all club together to ensure that a neighbouring despot attends this programme! On second thought, it would be a complete waste of our money, he doesn’t even know how to spell the words!
This year’s function centered around fund raising to ensure the ongoing achievement of these two objectives – the evening resulted in a doubling of their target to R4million. Well done! The evening was also used to honour three persons with the first Constitution Hill Trust Awards and who better than ‘Ma’ Albertina Sisulu; George Bizos and Arthur Chaskalson? Each deservedly received standing ovations. In the midst of all the current issues that appear to reflect so badly on various aspects of our country’s governance and jurisprudence, it is gratifying to be reminded that we have these great models who led the way and are still an influence in our society.
If you haven’t been to the ‘Hill’ recently, please take some time to visit it and have a good look around the Fort. It has been undergoing a large amount of meticulous restoration work and even the ramparts have been cleaned up and replanted whilst work has also started on restoring the adjacent Governor’s House. The whole complex is starting to look really great.
What I want to reflect on however, is the Trust’s programme to expose our children to the critical issues of constitutionalism, human rights and democracy. Since the opening of Constitution Hill I think over 6000 children have attended these programmes. They are taken through an interactive journey engaging with both the past and present realities of South Africa and the hope that our Constitution brings to the future. The Trust also funds the training of teachers who accompany and expose the learners to these issues. Cyril Ramaphosa, the Chair of the Trust, told of how the Constitution Hill ‘experience’ was not merely an educational one but profoundly moving for teachers and learners alike. Certainly it equips our youth and future leaders with the critical basic understanding of what these three words - constitutionalism, human rights and democracy - that have been quite tarnished lately, mean for our present and future generations -. This is a programme that should be compulsory for every single schoolchild from Lusikisiki, Laingsburg or wherever.
Whilst at the dinner I was approached by a young man who introduced himself to me as a friend of Pule who wrote the passionate letter about the city that I included in Citichat about two weeks ago. In our discussion, the issue of ‘city pride’ came up and the great need we have for all people to understand why the city was established and the journey it has taken, warts and all, what makes it tick, what is important and why it is a symbol to its citizens just as Paris and Rome and Prague are to those freed from previous tyrannies. The problem is that so few people know or are interested in these issues. Yet monthly, sometimes weekly, I take Joburgers and visitors through the city and end up with comments like “Wow, we just didn’t know about that or that this is actually happening to move this city with all the incredible pains of childbirth through its revitalisation stage to a World Class African City!”. Sure its easy to sneer at this undefined objective when you are confronted with pictures of toyi-toying JMPD officers and hear so called leaders making reprehensible statements and read of drunk judges – hey, the world has its problems and these are no reasons to tear our hair out and dress in sackcloth and ashes. Let’s get off our butts and do something. We want citizens who have pride in their city and understand their heritage, even if they dislike the rotten aspects of it. We need to show them what it was all about and ensure that the youth of Johannesburg are exposed to the city and learn some of its fascinating history, both the terrible things that happened and the wonderful. That is why Constitution Hill is so incredibly special – it is so rich in symbolism and meaning, representing as it does, the triumph of good over evil, right over wrong, freedom over repression. So does the city in its own way.
2010 is a great opportunity not just to create infrastructure and invest in projects we always have needed but couldn’t afford, but to change the attitude of ordinary people – it’s time for a massive Pride in our City campaign!
The second occasion of last week, and which underlines for me my earlier comments, was the official ‘opening’ of the urban environment upgrading work around the High Court in Pritchard Street.
In 1892 this was “Church Square” following the building of a small Dutch Reformed Church on the site. This was quite quickly replaced with a larger building and later bought by the Government. The open area next to the church was renamed Government Square. Subsequently, it was again renamed this time to honour Carl von Brandis who was the first Landrost of Johannesburg. Farmers and prospectors camped on the balance of the Square and it later also housed the city’s first synagogue. In front of the church building was a row of shops which included a cycle shop owned by the Hunt Brothers – later to become Williams Hunt & Co. Then the mining camp’s first school was built next to the church. The church building itself was utilised for different activities during its life – it was a bakery, a lecture hall, a polling station during elections and the offices of the Rand Aid Association. When the Government announced its intention to clear the site for the building of law courts there was a strong outcry However, as usual, Government wasn’t particularly interested in what the people had to say and demolitions began in 1909.
Directly north of the Court a fire station had previously been built and remained as Fire Brigade Headquarters until 1932 when it was demolished to make way for the Jeppe Street Post Office. This was built between 1933 and 1935 and was in fact the central Witwatersrand sorting depot for post carried by mail-trains, mail-ships and air carriers, hence the wording above the main entrance, Per Terram, Per Mare, Per Aera.
The law court building that was built, called “the new law courts”, was completed in 1911. A newspaper report of the time recorded that “few branches of the public service have been more badly housed throughout South Africa than the High Courts of Justice but in no town has the provision been inferior to that in Johannesburg.” The report then went on to say: ”However, the new buildings in process of erection on von Brandis Square will be worthy of the purpose they are to serve. They will be dignified, commodious and well equipped in every respect. Externally the building, which is to cost one hundred and thirty five thousand pounds, will be very handsome, its elevations being designed according to an adaptation of the Italian Renaissance, still the style will be restrained, avoiding over-ornateness. The designers of the New Rand High Court (The Transvaal Public Works Department) have seen to it that there shall be nothing wanting to meet the convenience and enhance the comfort of judges, counsel, solicitors, jurors, witnesses and (last, but by no means least in these days of advancing humanitarianism) the prisoners………Henceforth judges will dispense justice in a building worthy of the dignity of the law, and worthy of the great and growing city which it is to adorn.”
This building contains some unique features such as its stained glass window and coat-of-arms, the latter one of only two in the city (the other being in the Rissik Street Post Office). These two coats-of-arms were only in existence for a short time having been superseded by the Union of South Africa coat of arms. The floor also is embedded with brass strips providing the accurate standard measurement of 100 Cape Feet.
It wasn’t long before the building became too small to cope with rapidly increasing volumes of legal work and major internal alterations were undertaken to increase the number of courts to ten. Joeys’ dramatic population explosion continued to put pressure on the courts and temporary facilities and judges offices had to be temporarily provided elsewhere. Eventually a new high rise modern building containing additional courts and judges offices etc was slotted between the Post Office and the ‘old’ Supreme Court forming quite a dramatic backdrop to what van der Waal “ From Mining Camp to Metropolis” describes as “the horizontal blocklike shape with its accentuated corners, and the dominant section of the main entrance with its enormous dome.”
But, along with the rest of the CBD, the area around the court started to severely degenerate during the early 1990s. A taxi rank in von Brandis Street, informal traders and a high level of grime followed. By the end of the decade many of the advocates housed in the two major office buildings to the South of the Court had moved to Sandton and the future of the area was under severe strain. An informal improvement district was established to provide security and cleaning but this could be no more than a holding operation. Lawyer/property investor Gerald Olitzki (the visionary behind the Gandhi Square upgrade) believed that the area could be revitalised in much the same way as Gandhi Square, by bringing together the various property owners in the area together with Council for funding. A number of designs were developed and in-principle agreement reached when the two legal office blocks were sold, Innes Chambers to the Government to house the prosecuting authority and Schreiner Chambers to a consortium of investors. The sale put the project considerably back in time and negotiations had to start afresh. Eventually the JDA took the lead and with money from the public and private sectors (ApexHi, Old Mutual and Pitje Chambers) undertook the job of regenerating the area. Pavement upgrading, new lighting and street furniture including a striking street clock (designed by Lewis Levine) have made a positive impact on the area. But the most impressive feature of the upgrading has been the change to the position of the severe fence around the High Court Building to provide some badly needed open space on the corner of Pritchard and von Brandis Streets.
The statue of Carl von Brandis on this corner was in fact the very first public statue to be erected in Johannesburg, an event that took place in 1894 when the city was eight years old. Boy, that statue has seen changes! Interesting too to look at the differences in technique between the statue and that of the Mahatma on Gandhi Square. I think von Brandis looks like an aged rap artist with his microphone in his hand – sorry, I know it’s a bit irrelevant but hey, it’s Friday!
As they say, ‘have a lekker weekend’, cheers, neil
Couple of comments arising from last week’s Citichat on ‘Braamies’. Firstly, I had an irate call from a representative of one of the major corporates that has invested heavily in the upgrading and in their own accommodation in the area. He felt that I had painted too rosy a picture of conditions in the precinct and that maintenance and general urban management were sorely lacking. Secondly, had lunch at the “Nerina Trojon” on Wedneday – I wrote about this new eatery before it opened a couple of months back, but this was the first occasion I have had to visit it. Great décor, great food. Another value add to the Inner City and to Braamies in particular.
Heard Mike Mills (Classic FM) refer to Johannesburg Metro area recently as ‘trench city’. With new entrants into the telecommunications field ripping up roadsides for their cables which emerge like orange spaghetti at every pavement corner, trench city isn’t a bad description. Add to that the rapidly deteriorating roads, and the car dealers must be doing well in realignment and repairs to damaged suspensions to compensate for their drop in sales.
Courts, Citizenship and City Pride
Wrote about the Constitution Hill Trust just over a year ago when they had their inaugural fundraising dinner and was delighted to attend the second such dinner at the end of last week. The Trust was established with four basic objectives, the first two of which are:
(i) To secure the preservation and development of Constitution Hill as a heritage site symbolising our constitutional democracy.
(ii) to make provision for educational programmes to be conducted at or in respect of Constitution Hill for the purpose of educating South Africans on constitutionalism, human rights and democracy; and thereby to promote respect for constitutionalism, democracy and human rights – maybe we should all club together to ensure that a neighbouring despot attends this programme! On second thought, it would be a complete waste of our money, he doesn’t even know how to spell the words!
This year’s function centered around fund raising to ensure the ongoing achievement of these two objectives – the evening resulted in a doubling of their target to R4million. Well done! The evening was also used to honour three persons with the first Constitution Hill Trust Awards and who better than ‘Ma’ Albertina Sisulu; George Bizos and Arthur Chaskalson? Each deservedly received standing ovations. In the midst of all the current issues that appear to reflect so badly on various aspects of our country’s governance and jurisprudence, it is gratifying to be reminded that we have these great models who led the way and are still an influence in our society.
If you haven’t been to the ‘Hill’ recently, please take some time to visit it and have a good look around the Fort. It has been undergoing a large amount of meticulous restoration work and even the ramparts have been cleaned up and replanted whilst work has also started on restoring the adjacent Governor’s House. The whole complex is starting to look really great.
What I want to reflect on however, is the Trust’s programme to expose our children to the critical issues of constitutionalism, human rights and democracy. Since the opening of Constitution Hill I think over 6000 children have attended these programmes. They are taken through an interactive journey engaging with both the past and present realities of South Africa and the hope that our Constitution brings to the future. The Trust also funds the training of teachers who accompany and expose the learners to these issues. Cyril Ramaphosa, the Chair of the Trust, told of how the Constitution Hill ‘experience’ was not merely an educational one but profoundly moving for teachers and learners alike. Certainly it equips our youth and future leaders with the critical basic understanding of what these three words - constitutionalism, human rights and democracy - that have been quite tarnished lately, mean for our present and future generations -. This is a programme that should be compulsory for every single schoolchild from Lusikisiki, Laingsburg or wherever.
Whilst at the dinner I was approached by a young man who introduced himself to me as a friend of Pule who wrote the passionate letter about the city that I included in Citichat about two weeks ago. In our discussion, the issue of ‘city pride’ came up and the great need we have for all people to understand why the city was established and the journey it has taken, warts and all, what makes it tick, what is important and why it is a symbol to its citizens just as Paris and Rome and Prague are to those freed from previous tyrannies. The problem is that so few people know or are interested in these issues. Yet monthly, sometimes weekly, I take Joburgers and visitors through the city and end up with comments like “Wow, we just didn’t know about that or that this is actually happening to move this city with all the incredible pains of childbirth through its revitalisation stage to a World Class African City!”. Sure its easy to sneer at this undefined objective when you are confronted with pictures of toyi-toying JMPD officers and hear so called leaders making reprehensible statements and read of drunk judges – hey, the world has its problems and these are no reasons to tear our hair out and dress in sackcloth and ashes. Let’s get off our butts and do something. We want citizens who have pride in their city and understand their heritage, even if they dislike the rotten aspects of it. We need to show them what it was all about and ensure that the youth of Johannesburg are exposed to the city and learn some of its fascinating history, both the terrible things that happened and the wonderful. That is why Constitution Hill is so incredibly special – it is so rich in symbolism and meaning, representing as it does, the triumph of good over evil, right over wrong, freedom over repression. So does the city in its own way.
2010 is a great opportunity not just to create infrastructure and invest in projects we always have needed but couldn’t afford, but to change the attitude of ordinary people – it’s time for a massive Pride in our City campaign!
The second occasion of last week, and which underlines for me my earlier comments, was the official ‘opening’ of the urban environment upgrading work around the High Court in Pritchard Street.
In 1892 this was “Church Square” following the building of a small Dutch Reformed Church on the site. This was quite quickly replaced with a larger building and later bought by the Government. The open area next to the church was renamed Government Square. Subsequently, it was again renamed this time to honour Carl von Brandis who was the first Landrost of Johannesburg. Farmers and prospectors camped on the balance of the Square and it later also housed the city’s first synagogue. In front of the church building was a row of shops which included a cycle shop owned by the Hunt Brothers – later to become Williams Hunt & Co. Then the mining camp’s first school was built next to the church. The church building itself was utilised for different activities during its life – it was a bakery, a lecture hall, a polling station during elections and the offices of the Rand Aid Association. When the Government announced its intention to clear the site for the building of law courts there was a strong outcry However, as usual, Government wasn’t particularly interested in what the people had to say and demolitions began in 1909.
Directly north of the Court a fire station had previously been built and remained as Fire Brigade Headquarters until 1932 when it was demolished to make way for the Jeppe Street Post Office. This was built between 1933 and 1935 and was in fact the central Witwatersrand sorting depot for post carried by mail-trains, mail-ships and air carriers, hence the wording above the main entrance, Per Terram, Per Mare, Per Aera.
The law court building that was built, called “the new law courts”, was completed in 1911. A newspaper report of the time recorded that “few branches of the public service have been more badly housed throughout South Africa than the High Courts of Justice but in no town has the provision been inferior to that in Johannesburg.” The report then went on to say: ”However, the new buildings in process of erection on von Brandis Square will be worthy of the purpose they are to serve. They will be dignified, commodious and well equipped in every respect. Externally the building, which is to cost one hundred and thirty five thousand pounds, will be very handsome, its elevations being designed according to an adaptation of the Italian Renaissance, still the style will be restrained, avoiding over-ornateness. The designers of the New Rand High Court (The Transvaal Public Works Department) have seen to it that there shall be nothing wanting to meet the convenience and enhance the comfort of judges, counsel, solicitors, jurors, witnesses and (last, but by no means least in these days of advancing humanitarianism) the prisoners………Henceforth judges will dispense justice in a building worthy of the dignity of the law, and worthy of the great and growing city which it is to adorn.”
This building contains some unique features such as its stained glass window and coat-of-arms, the latter one of only two in the city (the other being in the Rissik Street Post Office). These two coats-of-arms were only in existence for a short time having been superseded by the Union of South Africa coat of arms. The floor also is embedded with brass strips providing the accurate standard measurement of 100 Cape Feet.
It wasn’t long before the building became too small to cope with rapidly increasing volumes of legal work and major internal alterations were undertaken to increase the number of courts to ten. Joeys’ dramatic population explosion continued to put pressure on the courts and temporary facilities and judges offices had to be temporarily provided elsewhere. Eventually a new high rise modern building containing additional courts and judges offices etc was slotted between the Post Office and the ‘old’ Supreme Court forming quite a dramatic backdrop to what van der Waal “ From Mining Camp to Metropolis” describes as “the horizontal blocklike shape with its accentuated corners, and the dominant section of the main entrance with its enormous dome.”
But, along with the rest of the CBD, the area around the court started to severely degenerate during the early 1990s. A taxi rank in von Brandis Street, informal traders and a high level of grime followed. By the end of the decade many of the advocates housed in the two major office buildings to the South of the Court had moved to Sandton and the future of the area was under severe strain. An informal improvement district was established to provide security and cleaning but this could be no more than a holding operation. Lawyer/property investor Gerald Olitzki (the visionary behind the Gandhi Square upgrade) believed that the area could be revitalised in much the same way as Gandhi Square, by bringing together the various property owners in the area together with Council for funding. A number of designs were developed and in-principle agreement reached when the two legal office blocks were sold, Innes Chambers to the Government to house the prosecuting authority and Schreiner Chambers to a consortium of investors. The sale put the project considerably back in time and negotiations had to start afresh. Eventually the JDA took the lead and with money from the public and private sectors (ApexHi, Old Mutual and Pitje Chambers) undertook the job of regenerating the area. Pavement upgrading, new lighting and street furniture including a striking street clock (designed by Lewis Levine) have made a positive impact on the area. But the most impressive feature of the upgrading has been the change to the position of the severe fence around the High Court Building to provide some badly needed open space on the corner of Pritchard and von Brandis Streets.
The statue of Carl von Brandis on this corner was in fact the very first public statue to be erected in Johannesburg, an event that took place in 1894 when the city was eight years old. Boy, that statue has seen changes! Interesting too to look at the differences in technique between the statue and that of the Mahatma on Gandhi Square. I think von Brandis looks like an aged rap artist with his microphone in his hand – sorry, I know it’s a bit irrelevant but hey, it’s Friday!
As they say, ‘have a lekker weekend’, cheers, neil
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