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.