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.