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.
