The Keyes Art Mile, Rosebank

I along with Ryan have 5 reasons as to why running launched itself off of a low base of worn out luminous Polly Shortts, torn, old sweat stained t-shirts, waffled flat trainers, Casio stop-watches and Bar-ones to become a phenomenal craze in which all of a sudden no one asks, ‘but what about the damage to your knees?’

We created our list as we harpooned our way through Jacaranda Jo-burg. Our list in no particular order:

The GPS watch. The watch which at the outset tended to be the size of a washing machine thrust one-self into tracking one’s own performance. The runner could document every run, it’s distance, it’s time and it’s speed. SPEED.And with that one could evaluate performance and improve on ability. Today it’s not uncommon for table talk to include the, ‘so, what pace you running?’ question. 

Nike. By creating a running shoe that didn’t look like a platform, that expressed colours prominent in an LSD trip, and that looked good both as you flexed your calves in the vegetable section of Woolworths and on the tar, an attraction between running and street cred was created.

Lycra. Sweet Mary Jane, Lycra. From its heady days in the 80’s when big hair, leg warmers, Jane Fonda and VHS died, Lycra has had a somewhat religious resurrection. Today, typically called leggings, women have adopted them like white on rice. They’re loved and adored for their form hugging properties, for the bragging rights afforded one should you look like a stealth missile wearing them, and for their comfort factor. Some women can wear them, and others are driven to wear them. Given our woke generation, even guys are known to romp around town in a pair, though apart from Kipchoge, they shouldn’t be worn by guys. It’s borderline blasphemy.

A late comer to the list has to include, Strava. This is the Facebook of running. If your run ain’t on Strava, it pretty much didn’t happen. 

 

And so running evolved from amoeba, to tadpole, to grizzly-bear-backed-barefooted guy, to Woolies hot chick.

On every other Thursday I’d clock out of the office and head to an art gallery. 

I was lured by the artwork, I was lured by the crowd and ofcourse I was lured by the open bar.

I loved it. I’d ask my mates to join and they never would. ‘sorry chaito, I’m at gym spinning’, or  ‘call me when you’re done scouring art’, and once, having taken a girl on a date to the gallery,  after about 18 minutes she said ‘take me home……NOW’

Art galleries weren’t cool. Even free tipple couldn’t attract a crowd. 

And then came the evolution of art gallery, the rebirth of cool, the serrated, truncated aeroplane wing of a building that sits on the corner of Jellicoe and Jan Smuts Ave high on its elevated perch. The Circa art gallery.

The Circa formed the iconic catalyst of the Keyes Art Mile. The Keyes Art Mile is a superlative stab at urban planning on a small scale. As one hops and skips along it’s spine, tasty Hansie and Grietjie crumbs - the green, soft-to-the touch, buoyant, blossoming St Teresa’s parking lot, the ever steady Everard Read Gallery , The Trumpet and Circa gallery-dot the street. All waiting to be devoured by passers-by as a ravenous intermittent faster.  

The Circa gallery is a simple building, perfectly executed, beautifully located.

It’s a solid, mottled, oval form making a powerful statement deflecting ones pre-conceived notion of what a building ought to look like. Even its internal experience is unfamiliar. It’s corkscrew stair sweeps its way up to the midriff where the main exhibition space sits continuing further onto the roof-scape where masterful views of a setting sun await.

The Trumpet is scintillating, people-centric architecture. The ground floor is wholly dedicated to street culture, to people interaction and seamless movement. One floor up and the double volume exhibition and fine retail space are a popped shaken soda of excitement.

The Everard Read Gallery plays its role as a further player in this interactive video game. It is a good space. It harboured at different times some of my most favoured local artists and it was here that I invested in one of my first pieces. The gallery is a meandering maze of different rooms, levels and displays. It’s size and configuration-not too small, not too big, but Goldilocksian ‘just right’ allowed me much time to drift, drink and dabble.

With these spirited efforts dressed each in their own unique garb lining the drag, they are in-fact presenting  the street as the architecture, the place for play. The buildings become the theatrical backdrop in which social interactions, pleasant strolls, seats to sit or bacchanalian frivolities are to be played out. 

Though First Thursdays destroyed my special place, the galleries spill out a-gush with both artoes, winoes and hipster o’s mingling over street cart food, beverages and chin wags. The cascading stairs offered by the Trumpet become Joburg’s Spanish Steps, dripping with star spangled revellers, Doc Martin goths and plaid pretenders. 

The natural interaction of the buildings and the landscaping offer all that Sohosian streets deliver to the people of London. I know. I’ve imbibed the spirit there.

The cobbly road and the rough crushed river stone’s are an aural experience. The pre-historic, giant rocks are seats and car crash barriers adding an earthy palette to a grey scape. The Mile shuns the vehicle for paving and wild and untethered flower beds anchored by skeletal trees skinned in flaking bark. And the smooth textured larger-than-me Eduardo Villa’s educate the First Thursday boozing masses. These elements/ ingredients ‘reduce’ the street width becoming the lacing binding, weaving the buildings either side of the street together like a tethered corset embracing a buxom bust.

All components in creating an architecture for people.

Apart from Melrose Arch, pre-planned, implemented urban schemes are few and far between in our town. They demand a long term vision, they demand buy-in from a number of stakeholders and they demand big loot. It’s visionary-Elon-Musk-kind-of stuff. But if you look closely you’ll see this small experiment being amoebic in Rosebank.

The Marc on Rivonia Road

I remember I went with Mikey to Sodwana. He went to dive and I simply went to get beach sand in my swimming trunks.

I remembered you could buy one of these giant pineapples on the side of the road.  The owner of the stall, using a machete fit for killing gorillas, would chop off the geometric, prickly skin with a number of violently deathly blows, and with the final swoosh, decapitating the poor fruit, sending its crown plummeting to the earth, discarded to reveal a golden yellow, Tonya Harding-tangy, sweet as gsus fruit. As the origami-looking effort was handed to me to be sucked, licked, bitten and devoured, I raised it in awe like Simba, and there by the light of the G-d-given golden orb, it glistened in the north eastern sunshine.

Every day as I missile down the M1 hurtling south I get a glimpse of the sparkling Marc reflecting the radiance of the setting sun, sitting hugged as a crown jewel in its perch on the periphery of the Sandton CBD, and I recall licking pineapples during those lazy days in Sods.

It certainly demands a moment of rubber necking for its an unusual shape in unusual colours. There is no doubt, it intrigued me, it intrigued others.

The Marc now sits where the legendary Village Walk mall once sat.
Village Walk was an innovative mall In that one could walk directly off the street into the mall. It was open to pedestrians with limited barriers to entrance. It had the Blues Room where I saw Barney Simon, it had a workable pseudo Italian street scene offering coffee shops, eateries, Sweets For/From Heaven and volumes of air and space. But what I remember most distinctly, was that when I was in standard 8 or 9, we started to go out on the jol, well I was a bit of a late bloomer, so it was really then when other kids were doing lines of coke off of toilet seats I was innocently listening to Dave Matthews albums on a cd player in my batman pj's. The point being it offered nightlife, it offered hailing cabs, it offered a "trevi-like' fountain which we sat upon and tossed coppers into, and it offered a relationship between inside and out.

For whatever reason the legendary Village Walk where we hung out as school kids was demolished to give way to The Marc.

As the concrete core climbed and the skew columns splayed like a stray rod in a game of pick-up-sticks my expectations were high. The raw structure of the building was a thing of aesthetics, it was an expression of beauty.
Lipsticked and mascara'd, the structure polished has taken on it's Faberge-type look. Its shiny, its glossy-mag ready, its enticing. But is it my kinda good architecture?

The plaza-like space in-front of the Pineapple on Rivonia road is deep and roomy. It's textured cobbled paving, the sculptural piece of landscape art , and the soft green landscaping to cools things off, offer a distinctive human scale to the building complex. The gentle rise to the Seattle Coffee too gives a living-in-Manhatten-coffee-sipping-in-a-wee-bodega effect. These, created as an engagement with the public. An interface that’s appealing.

Maude street is unique in the Sandton CBD context. It's narrow like a rabbits warren. Buildings tower on each side of the road, leaning in like Sheryl Sandbergh. and there is an attempt at on-grade retail.

Given the Maude slope, either side of the road is still defensive with The Marc's retail bunkered below ground and Nedbank's raised on high. It's not pretty, but, it'll work. which reminds me of a story.

I played golf as a junior and I made it into our club's handicap league. Handicap league consisted of players with handicaps from say 3 and upwards. Our teams worst handicap was about an 8. I got into the team as an 18.I wasn't there as a future prospect, I was there to win dirty. Sunday arrived for my debut league match. Typically the worst handicapped pair would fire up the tee box first. Around the tee box as I stepped up to my ball were my teammates,7 of them, the opposition players, numbering 8, the two team managers, and some supportive parents. I pseudo warmed-up doing a few loose swings dusting the tee with my club head, addressed the ball swinging my hips, and then, zeroing in on the ball with lazer-beam focus, I took a wide long coiled swing. Boooooom. the ball ricocheted at knots speed off of the club face. My head flew up in expectation of witnessing the ball careening tiger line down the fair way. but alas, there it was dribbling, bobbing, skipping like Heidi in the Alps, landing gently, deftly, maybe, 100meters away. I heard a clap. A clap.
My captain sympathetic to the moment, walked up to me, hand on shoulder, positively consoling me, he offered, 'Chaity, it'll work'.

I learnt, while working at Osmond Lange about the necessity of ‘grain’ in architecture. Fine grain creates interest in architecture. It's that which holds the attention of the passerby, it keeps the eye engaged and the spirit uplifted. Jutting balconies, recesses in the façade, projecting nibs and recessed nooks, windows and their cills, pushes and pulls on the face of the building, the play of light and shade. The architectural dance. This is the fine grain.

The Marc and the ENS building play a different game. They make use of solid forms generating 'wow's' from afar. but up close, its homogenous, flat. When we were small kids we played with square and circle and triangular blocks. but as we grew up we took on toys with more definition, finer details, intricacies like Lego, model building, Technica, and Mechano.

I've no doubt the building performs functionally and that its economically viable. The two street access points are endearing. and I still get a smile when I pass by the Pineapple.i love how the The ENS drips off down the buildings façade like liquid Crayola. and im eager to get a cappuccino moustache at Seattle soon.

But I will stop short when we draw 'cool' shapes and begin calling it architecture.

I heard a poignant quote by one of contemporary times most lauded architects, he of Guggenheim fame, Frank Gehry, 'most of our cities are built with just faceless glass, only for economies and not for humanities'. Sadly, this has become all too true. 

The Sasol Building

I think I had a pretty lekker childhood. We had friends that lived alongside a giant piece of dirt. There as the last boerie had been grazed off of the still warm bbq we’d tie our North Stars tight, we’d grab a stick of Bubbalicious, saddle up our bmx’s and race into the dirty dry veld. We’d do bunny hops and skids and ramp off dangerous stuff. That we did as the sun shone high in the sky. As the golden orb plummeted we’d all scuttle into the ‘spare room’ where the giant Scale-Electrix was installed. Its swirling tracks, its switch backs, its gleaming formula-one cars, painted red beaming like a star in the spot-light’s glow. Man alive I was living a Tron movie. After the thumb action, we’d all huddle on the one 3-seater couch, grab the well worn VHS cassette out the plastic box, jam it into the machine, push down, hit rewind and then hit play. It was Speilberg’s E.T. and we were glued mesmerised.

Bumbling down Katherine street during my lunch hour, I came upon (no innuendo intended) the Sasol building. 

The Sasol building which sits on Katherine Street in Sandton hyper-speeded my mind back to those heavenly 80’s of pliable He-Man, Spaceballs, Tron, Fanta Grape, puffy aerobic socks and Spielberg movies.

My close encounter with this kind of architecture left me dumbed for only it could have been conceived by an lsd-infused architecture student-it sits as unfamiliar, alien-like, and out of place. Coming from a school of architecture where order and geometry were the established modes of design, this is certainly colouring-outside-of-the lines.

It is a strange, odd looking edifice. It has no back , it has no front. It’s androgynous. It’s menacing as it projects its arms outwards piercing the sky. It is beautiful to photograph for it is dynamic. It’s facadal folds, the rolling of the sun and the ebb and flow of any kind of cloud across the sky present the building differently each day, each hour, each minute. Its reflective face depicts the daily duties of Pez-like public transport-mini taxis and Ubers trading places. In. drop off. Out. In. drop off. Out.

Pedestrians , I see, have no place. 

Its form is voluptuous, it’s sexy. It’s abstract, difficult to read, difficult to understand. What is its DNA-XY or YY?. It’s a squat bulging building pulled plasticine. It’s devoid of orientation. It’s mutant skin regulating its internals. It is as an objet d’art. I want to experience it as I would a Cianfanelli or a Dylan Lewis. I want to touch it, to stand along-side it, to experience its slanting walls. But as it sits as a polished diamond on its stone clad pedestal, I cannot.

Movies, art, sculpture, scale electrix are art. Architecture isn’t. Architecture isn’t solely an object to be experienced from afar in a magazine or online. Architecture is integral to its surroundings, it is a critical component of its landscape. It is there to be engaged, to be touched, to be felt. It should add to street life, it should enhance street life. It should tell a story, it should connect. The Sasol building is a non-fitting puzzle piece in a complex cityscape. It ought to fulfil a public role, it ought to give something to our city. As it sits on hits raised plinth, it’s impenetrable.  This expression is but a pretty picture, lessening the true role that architecture should be playing in acting as a catalyst for better integrating our city.

Buildings are erected to span time frames and occupants. I write this as the Creative Counsel Building sits empty, now for a year or so. Developed for one tenant’s vision and purpose it will have a difficult 2^nd life. So too, the Sasol building sits precariously.

Back in 2005 while trawling through Carnaby Street, London blowing tons of quids, I bought a pair of Levi’s bootlegs. They had paint splashes designed in them and a fabric inset at the boot to give them a bit of splay. They were cooler than ice as me and Richie rode the tube on Saturday evening s drinking Ribena and vodka pre-gaming before a night in a club in Kings Cross.

Those pair of jeans saw the height of alternative rock, they saw Pearl Jam live in Tottenham Court Road, they saw Dave Matthews in Birmingham, they saw Cold Play at Isle of Wight, they saw Radiohead. They saw the Royal Albert Hall and Nobu restaurant. They saw it all. But 15 years later on I’m not sure I’d take them out again. Their blue haze has faded, their time has passed.

I fear that’s the Sasol building.

The Discovery Head Office

My wife and I just went to see the movie, Free Solo. We saw it at an Imax, the type of movie house I’d never visited. The cavernous scale of the theatre, the sheer size of the wall of the screen, and the number of seats dwarfed us into thinking we were wee objects in a child’s printers tray display. Our popcorn was teeny and our cokes were tiny. Apart from feeling like midgets with Rick Moranis as our dad, the super-sized space was fitting to view the finger feats of Alex Honnold.

Beep Beep Beep….Searching for Satellite…beeeep. 0:00..0:01. Garmin activated.
When I stepped out of the Sandton City parking lot the following day, exiting the vehicular garage by foot, glaring south into a wall of traffic, there in the background I stared awed at the gargantuan edifice hewn from a gloss blower’s mouth, The Discovery building- Sandton cbd’s El Capitan.
*Heart rate rising. Flashing, beating little heart emoticon*

Viewing the building from the Mall, the ribbed curtain rises, billowing, appearing as the gaping yawn of a whale; that’s the building’s feature shot, the one we’re all instagramming, piercing the Sandton Drive/Rivonia road intersection.

I snaked and laddered my way across this goliath intersection ensuring I scoped the big insurer from all angles. *Thumping heart rate, the black stick digits flipping over rapidly*. Beatles-walking the zebra crossings, I felt my life was not in my hands for in a moment I could have been road kill, or a Jackson Pollock splattered on the windshield of a Cayenne.   Approaching from the south, I walked in the blazing sunshine hugging the serrated walls of the building for a slight hint at shade, alas, it eluded me. Hopping and skipping in the direction of the lofted sun, the building banana-curved down towards Katherine drive opening up a vista of Weber Wentzel and a mega stretch of hot new commercial properties. Walking at pace, the uniform façade with its vertical pin stripes, a nod at the suits across the road, flicked by like an ipod’s shuffle. The sheer enormity of the blank wall is bold. It grabbed my attention once, but probably not again.  

Reaching the corner, now standing on the precipice before the ground plummets eastwards the dark oil-blue envelope of the building runs switch backs, curves and loops, swirling around the corner like a sultry flicking flamenco dancer. A ribbed grey second-skin to the dark blue pulses up and down as an active electrocardiogram readout. Blip.blip.blip.
The combination of the two, a Fred and a Ginger-a dynamic dance at the city’s edge, her raffled dress rising, falling as the edifice rises towards the east.
Set back in one of the voluptuous folds of the building, sits the main pedestrian entrance, inviting, womblike.  There’s no particular brouhaha about the portal other than it’s toned down, modest location and the flying sauceresque canopy. ‘Ground control to Major Tom’
Tumble Tumbling my way eastwards along Katherine, I rolled fast. Bibbing and bobbing down the hill, the altitude aplummeting and my thighs abracing. Pivoting on my heels, looking back towards the building, a giant wall, a giant fortification lurks. It hovers heavily over Katherine. Dominating.   The building crowns the intersection, anchoring it with a little help from the jenga-like Weber Wentzel responding with height, with purpose and with proximity. The two adjacent corners-Sandton City with its limp whoopee cushion of a dome and half-baked people’s entrance coupled with the US Embassy, an island, are the river banks that have burst, draining the intersection of potential life and activity.

Stood still on the cool down, my heart rate monitor dropping to as-if-a-stiff 67, I pondered the visit. There in that mirrored facade my reflection staring back at me I saw the opportunity lost-the possible coffee shop bursting as an over ripe granadilla onto the pavement inviting pedestrians, the athletic store attracting the sneaker pimps, and the restaurant encouraging after-hour activity, trees softening the paving edge and offering shade from the blistering African sun, an intersection softened by cobbled paving stones and gentle humps making safe a strolling citizen. Imagine all of that. Tv Bar.

The Discovery Building is a statement building, it emits presence. It defines edges, but it doesn’t give wholeheartedly back to the city. It’s an architectural ejaculation in the Canary-Wharf guise. Though it ought to be said, that little sojourn got my heart rate up, 300 Vitality points and a super free Joe joffee. Whether that’s the architecture or the brisk walk, well, we’ll never know. Up the Oranges.

Moses Mabhida Stadium, Durban

Anyone who has recently been to Durban for whatever reason it might have been; swimming, surfing, cycling or indulging in a hot roti; most definitely would have had their eyeballs fixated on what has become an extraordinary marvel on the rolling lush green landscape of Durban.

If it was thought that South Africa couldn’t pull off an architectural piece of wizardry, go ogle the new Durban stadium. Durban Stadium or Moses Mabhida, epitomises the design and construction capability of this southern tipped wedge. ‘Handed over recently, it places South Africa’s construction industry and its ability to deliver world class structures at the top with its international competitors’, say the excited Osmond Lange over-seeing director, Deon van Onselen

A new Iconic Stadium

The clients brief danced around the ideas of an iconic building.

According to the Ethekwini Municipality, the brief’s non-negotiable was that the stadium performed as an icon, as a beacon to the city of Durban. To be an icon, the stadium ought to imbue meaning, familiar associations and symbolic representations to distinguish it in a world of homogony. To be iconinc, it must root itself culturally, aesthetically and through meaning to its environment. By anchoring itself, its functioning and its environment to cultural associations it will be rendered  memorable and distinguishable.                                                                                                                  These ideas of Icon, were to be achieved through common understandable space, through texture, colour and artefacts significant to its surroundings and its people. the brief laid out that it should be a symbol of civic pride and inspiration to those using it, visiting it or running it. It should draw on its surroundings, on the physical features which give identity and character to the site-the sea, the river, and the dunes. That it should well in the spirits of the people a sense of achievement, a sense of ownership.  That the icon inspires a web, binding people old and young, races and nationalities. The iconoclastic edifice should hum a welcoming rhythm inviting people of all walks of life to feel welcome in its embrace. The psychology of the building through architectural and structural elements ought to encompass or allow for people to feel easy, comfortable and alive with in its surrounds. The stadium does exactly that, it wows, thrills and has etched excitement into the minds of South Africans previously dubious about the possibility of it all. The Stadium has somewhat defined the travellers experience of Durban.

The stadium would be seen too as a catalyst for further growth and development of the city of Durban. It would also usher in a new phase of the city’s emergence within the country. This new stadium is a reflection of the ideas and ideologies of the Ethekwini Municipality, and begins to signify its intent in expressing an interest in architectural progress but also reflecting social, cultural and political change.

The stadium sits in its precinct as a light white edifice on a green landscaped base, harking back to the piazza del Duomo in Pisa. This podium, on which the stadium rests forms a gathering space outside the stadium

Having had the opportunity to scale the heights, to rise up the elevated platform of an African landscape re-imagined, towards the stadium bowl, I was absolutely mesmerized.  I was struck by the blatant expression of structural integrity, and by the light and shadow play of the steel pylons leaning rather beautifully, sweeping around the stadium like tutu-clad ballerinas in the pirouette position.  The super structural elements visible, emerge as off shutter concrete, light grey in colour and glass smooth to the touch.  I was left gob smacked by the over arching arch, pulled taught  like a bow ready to fling the country into a month of extreme excitement , splayed at the foot to allow for a view, a window to the city of Durban, a most enticing backdrop. From afar, a distance the arch is a defining silhouette, a recognisable marker in the landscape, a means of orientation assisting in the navigation of the city. The Arch a support for the tensile roof structure,  a network of steel cables, looking oh-so-delicate as to be plucked like a Stradivarius, the ring-beam, a bicycle wheel pulling the steel ropes, binding the exterior façade,  all piecing this whole marvel to form a gymnastic ‘perfect 10’.

In contrast to the stark light grey coolness of the off-shutter concrete, the palette of colours utilised on in fill walls and interiors is far warmer. The architects dipped their paint brush into the ocean, used the tones of the beaches, the brightly explicit colours of clothing and the exuberance of handcrafted jewellery to express the vibrancy of the local surrounds in the building.

Osmond Lange formed an integral part of a sextuplet of architectural teams under the consortium Ibhola Lethu Consortium.

The South African team collaborating together with the astute structural genius and functional planning know-how of a firm of German architects has vaulted the stadium into the echelons of a world class sporting facility and at the same time has created something rather special, something aligned with a jewel in the Zulu kingdom’s crown.

The navel, the sugar bowl of the stadium, a light and energy force on the landscape is encircled in a series of layered elements, both functional and aesthetic allowing for social space, restaurants, gazing and admiring of artworks. The social/public space, branded Imbizo Place, houses 6000sqm of retail and dining facilities. The intention of this was to broaden the possibilities of usage to which the Stadium and its immediate ‘precinct’ could be put to so, other recreational activities, and diverse cultural events can be hosted in the future. These resources bode well for the future longevity of the stadium.

The stadium is designed to be transparent, allowing by-standers to get a feel of the action taking place inside-everyone will be able to sense the electrifying atmosphere even if you aren’t a fortunate ticket holder. A facility to allow for those outside the stadium to experience the frenzy has been developed. Its called ‘Peoples Park’, a 10Ha landscaped public park area, including sports fields and the ‘Heroes Walk’, a mapped out route from the city centre to the stadium.  The People’s Park incorporating the restructured district, the consolidated sports precinct and the public space would serve as a central park for Durban and collectively would form part of the Stadium’s iconic statement. An hierarchy of urban functions and places will be established within the park with the stadium being the central focus. 

As I sat on the raw concrete steps that were to be the raked seating I was informed that 70 000 screaming, excitable football fans could be accommodated during the FIFA 2010 Football World Cup, and 54 000 in legacy mode thereafter. I was awed. That is surely world class. The seating, a pixellated image of bright colouring drawing its inspiration from the ivory coloured beach sand merging into the turquiouses and pastel blues of the ocean is a playful light-hearted aesthetic giving the stadium bowl a sense that it is a landscape. The upper stand of the bowl seating is awash in colours graded from yellow to white, the middle stand graded in a yellow to green pixel mix with scattered light greys and whites, and lastly the lower stand sees individual seating graded in a blue to green pixel mix dotted too with light greys and whites.

There are some exciting opportunities as a visitor to the stadium to experience the building itself. If you’ve an inner core of iron clad steel, you will be able to take a ride from the northern side of the stadium up along the arch to its pinnacle. From here spectators can catch a glimpse of the city from a birds perspective. The alternative for those more adventurous and with calves of titanium is to take a guided walk up the 550 stairs to a platform at the top. I’ll stick to rollerblading on the Peoples Park.

The stadium was intricately thought through, and in-bedded are the symbolic elements which enhance the experience of being inside or outside the stadium. The expanded steel mesh wrapping the façade and the infill panels of the balustrades illicit the beauty of hand-made baskets. Depending on one’s perspective the facades of the stadium appear to be either opaque or transport. A dynamic feature of the building.

the white tensile roof, harbours notions of the nearby harbour and of the white horses prancing, topping the seas of the natal coast, the use of natural indigenous planting and trees linking the precinct on an urban scale enhances ones sense that this is emphatically Africa’s world cup, Africa’s party, the incorporation of signs and symbols particular to the African landscape contextualises the building. All these elements give the stadium both an intellectually and experientially enhanced  feel.

As I trudged away from the site with dust swirling in my nostrils, I looked back at the stadium. Its purity and simplicity of form reminding me of the Berlin Olympic stadium- It’s unwavering bold, sturdy form, absolutely dramatic in the landscape.

This edifice is sexy, sultry, and sits prominently in the landscape. It is without a doubt a marvel of a backdrop to a great event, a great sport.

Vodafone Innovation Centre, Midrand. GLH Architects

Ah, a sandwich, a beigel sandwich, an ‘everything’ beigel splashed with hundreds and thousands of seeds, gently toasted on either side.buttered. Cream cheese, double thick, cresting as it’s heavily smeared atop the warm New Yorker holy plateau, melting as it hits the warmth of the toasty edge. The Nova lox, salmon, gloriously pink, plucked fresh from the claws of a giant grizzly in the cold tundra of Canada. As the smoked salmon is bedded upon the cream cheese, heavily set, fresh cut firm tomatoes, bursting with seed are laid to rest, overlapping the pinky gray. Capers, hugged and squeezed are drizzled over the tomatoes. Ah a crack o’ pepper, a shake o’ salt, and then crowned with the top side of the beigel. aaaah....sorry, this is an architecture blog. I digress.

the Vodacom Innovation Hub that sits in Midrand , sits layered, founded on a series of snaking Gabion walls, walls that ‘breathe’ allowing cool breaths of wind to pass beneath the building to circulate through its bowels. Giant chillers sip sippity sip the cool breeze, plummeting its temperatures, and pulsing the coolness through the breathing gills set with-in the pre-cast slabbed floor.

The double Skin facade performs allowing the edifice to appear aquarium-like.  Harnessing the science of radiation, transmittance, and conduction, the 2 panes of glass sandwich an 800mm air filler active in buffering the inside from the heat of outside. The void open to the elements breathes mediating the infiltrating outside temperatures.  Automated blinds rise and fall as the sun dots and dances its path across the sky protecting occupiers from harsh radiation.
The facade sits upon a concrete floor, pre-cast and pre-piped for winding chilling pipes to gush cold coolth through the ground as summer temperatures soar. 
The eucalyptus trunks lean and beautifully paired support the laminated beams, soft roof, and some serious electricity generating solar panels. The abundance of energy supplies even the neighbours. What a giver. Centre of the square donut sits a water purification plant souping up rain water and grey water too. It’s filled with indigenous reeds which are soaking and cleaning making reuse practical.

Radiant coolers divide spaces, cool the rising heat, satiate the thirst of plants below and act as water cooler talking points.

Outside chipped once-used Spanish roof tiles lay scattered upon the earth keeping moisture in the soil, protecting it from the pulverising drying abilities of the sunny orb. Indigenous planting huddles, surrounds the oblong building sipping not too much and not too little, but just right.

This is Johannesburg’s 6-star Green Star test tube. It’s an illustration of sustainable design, there to be seen, there to be understood.

Alexander Forbes, Sandton

The building gathering all the adulation of a coked-up rock ‘n roll star is the Alex Forbes building on Rivonia Road. 

Oooh it’s Green Star rated and Versus can’t stop shouting from the hill tops that they painted it. It’s won every award this country offers architects, and when groups of students walk the tour they gawp, dribbling upon the tiled floorscape, staring upwards, inwards at the heaving lung of the atrium.

The corner of West and Katherine is a monolith, a towering peak. Impregnable. The towering parking basement soaks up the flak of the giant slope both West and Katherine present. From a southerly approach, the building is impenetrable; showered in shadow not offering much for a pedestrian who wishes to dance and sing in the rain.
then swooping front side the building’s grilled mask, Its flecked gills, its breathing apparatus present its self to an adoring crowd.

as our bus drops us on Rivonia road, the building greets us with its deep pavement, a spacious  enough plaza softening the narrow-edged paving of neighbouring buildings. The building sits North West, its front door spilling onto Rivonia Road like a splashed cup of cool-aid. It’s presented to the City of Sandton a soft edge through its emerging, narrowing staircase buffered by indigenous growings. The babbling brooks are unique in a concretised CBD softening the land, softening our minds. It’s approachable, though the defended facade is agreeable and anyone can dilly dally in its cocooned landscape. It’s the corporate way they say. with its Darth Vadian mask of a facade, its grilled visor and breathing apparatus, the extra-terrestrial of A Forbes lurks prominently.

Pushing through the revolving door, we’re revolutionised. The receptionists sit foetal in the sculpted pavilions. The deep voluminous clinical atrium is ribbed by swirling light-weighted walkways looped in LED cutting through the daylit space like a floor gymnast and her swash buckling ribbons .As I stare up towards the bowels of the building, looking up the ribbed cage towards the amoeba like sky lights, I see portals to the outer world, my Oculus VR goggles well holstered to my cargo pants.

The interior is a looking-glass into the future where we’ll be inhabiting a Martian landscape with driverless pods careening through the fogless lungs of habitable atria.
The central service core is protected by the buildings rib cage, this is the heart of the edifice. Escalators zig zag occupants up around up around up and for those wanting an insular ride the elevators fling one floor to floor in a flash kissing levels disconnected from any sexy romance.
sputnik has landed, the Russians are coming.
The roof scape is a machines lair. The looping cabling and exhaust vents defining a landscape of robotic desertion. It’s soul is stripped and only the views south towards the rolling scapes of Illovo lighten our eyes. From here Sandton is arises. Glass ribbed buildings and glass blob-like structures define an icy landscape, an ice fall while the landfill dump of Alex is in our midst.

Arise futurist city, arise.