Projects - Wolff Architects

We were appointed to design the scenography for the When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting exhibition at the Zeitz MoCAA in Cape Town. The exhibition features 200 artworks from Africa and its diaspora, celebrating African and African-descent experiences. Our design of the WWSU exhibition considered the curatorial organisation of the 6 themes. We proposed a series of ochre and green curved walls within the traditional gallery space. The curves create gestures predicting movements as a way to navigate through the exhibition. The colours and materials used in the exhibition reflect scenes of many artworks that can be seen in the show. Spaces for reflection, soft loungey resting areas with acoustic treated surfaces with furniture specially sourced from local designers and manufacturers. The exhibition is accompanied by a Sonic Translation compiled by South African composer and sound artist Neo Muyanga.

Wolff Architects were appointed for the design and technical documentation of this temple following an international competition. The Bahà’i International Office for Temples and Sites appointed Rankin Engineering in Lusaka as commissioning client, contractor and civil, electrical and mechanical engineers. The bulk of the architectural work was done during the Covid19 lockdown.

The Bahá’í faith and its temples

The Bahá’í faith is a religion founded in the 19th Century in Iran and has spread throughout the world since then. The faith was established by Bahá’u’lláh and his letters and epistles; along with thesem are works of the Báb, his forerunner, and writings and talks of his son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. These works have been assembled into the Bahá’í scriptures.

The Bahá’í faith stresses the unity of all people as its core teaching, and temples are required to be an expression of the commitment to equality. All temples should be nonagonal (nine sided) in plan and should be formed by a repetition of nine, identical segments, around a central dome. Each segment should have a door, with no one door being more important than the other. This arrangement of the space and entry points is meant to show that people from everywhere are welcomed equally. The temple should reflect local traditions and should be built by people from the surrounding area. The temple should be “as perfect as possible” and must be brought about through a process of collaboration and joint decision making. The seating inside the temple must face Qiblih, the direction that Bahá’í should face when saying their daily prayers.

Six continental Bahá’í temples have been built as symbolic, continental centres of assembly. This temple in Kinshasa is one of a series of National temples which serve as a daily space of prayer and devotion, and also as a national space of assembly on significant days in the Bahá’í calendar. The national and continental temples are always set in expansive garden settings, which are open to the public and are meant as spaces of meditation and reflection. These tranquil gardens should have the temple at its centre.

The National Bahá’í temple of the DRC

The site for the temple is just off Avenue Patrice Lumumba, the main road running through Kinshasa. Most of the site is a level plateau adjacent to a fertile valley. The temple is sited on the cusp of the plateau, overlooking the valley with views of the Congo River in the distance. A nine sided star marks the periphery of the garden, but instead of its “perfection” being imposed on the landscape, the characteristics of the topography are allowed to enrich the experience of traversing these pathways around the temple.

Lightness

A sense of the sacred is evoked in this temple by making the structure miraculously light. The central dome rests on a thin, hovering slab with no columns supporting it. All structural edges are super thin (125mm) and are evidently too light to support the structure they carry. The enactment of an effortless lightness becomes an allegory of the sacred.

This is technically achieved by revealing secondary structure, whilst concealing primary structure; the structure of the dome rests on the gallery which conceals a compression ring in the tiered seat, yet all the gallery slab edges are thin. The centroid of the dome structure coincides with the centroid of the compression ring and the centroid of the stairs. Although the stair stringers are thin, the change in level around the stairs conceal a deep stair arm, capable of carrying the forces. The stairs support the hovering gallery slab, whilst the structural system is held together by an underground tension ring.

The edges of all openings in the crown of the dome and the external skin of the building is also 125mm thick which gives the sense of a cut through a delicate membrane.

Light

A great deal of time was spent during the design process to establish the character of the light. The search for an authenticity in the light was resolved by not relating the character of light to expressions typical of other religions, such as high glare light of stained glass windows in churches or the “pixelated” light panels in screens of mosques. The desire for expressions of equality in the religion informed the decision to create low glare light that will illuminate the interior in an equivalent manner. This character of light illuminates all the spaces occupied by people. The light in the dome works somewhat differently; light from outside illuminates the exterior dome at the top of the building and this light enters the temple through nine openings, cut into the crown of the inner dome. The dramatic contract between the light levels on the two domes allow for very simple and cost effective dome construction. At the centre of the temple is a nine sided star with the “Greatest Name” (name of God) inscribed on a translucent panel.

Art

Textile art is a persistently extraordinary art form in the DRC. In studying historic textiles of the country and discussing the appreciation that people have for contemporary textile art, several expressive possibilities emerged. Firstly, that many textiles are produced collaboratively; for instance the back of a textile would be woven by men and the embroidery on the front would be made by groups of woman who work in the tradition of pattern making. The final textile surface is an assemblage of portions made by different individuals. Correspondences are sought in the patterns of adjoining panels during assembly, but mismatches are also treasured. Secondly, in softening the textile through pounding, sometimes the surface is broken. The broken areas are patched and these marks of repair are integral to the new piece. Repair becomes part of creation and the ongoing life of the textile. Thirdly, Congolese textiles are not made to be in museums as flattened out pieces on display. The ideal way of appreciating Kuba or Shoowa textile for instance, is to see it wrapped around a body, in motion. Patterns should be appreciated on an undulating surface.

The artwork for the exterior of the temple was the result of a collaborative design process. Wolff Architects collaborated with Maja Marx to establish the design which was then passed on to the Bahá’í congregation of the DRC and the international office to comment on and propose alternatives. The final design was established through several iterations and was finally accepted by all involved.

As much as the exterior surface relates to the textile traditions of the DRC, it equally makes reference to Bahá’í scriptures; the metaphor of rain is used to explain how God’s grace is bestowed equally on all people. The importance of the collective is reinforced by statements such as “We are drops of one ocean, waves of one sea, flowers of one garden and leaves of one tree.” The idea emerged that a correspondence exists between these Bahá’í images and people’s daily experience of thunderstorms and the sense that the DRC, as a country, is defined by being the basin of the Congo River.

The tessellated ceramic tile surface covers the temple form like a textile wrap. The logic of tiling lent itself naturally to the language of weaving. The sense of a delicate covering is enhanced by making the surface pattern independent from the building form that it is applied to. The surface pattern was established by flattening the curvilinear surfaces into a series of canvases onto which the pattern was painted. The art was then converted into pixilated colour accent segments with contrasting matt and gloss finishes, which were manually applied. The 135 000 tiles were then reduced to 22 500 sets of individual tiling instructions which were carefully applied by Congolese tilers.

‘Renewing our habits of assembly: borrowing thoughts and practices from Fred Moten and Katriena Majiet’

Wolff Architects presents a winter school with Ola Hassanain, Vivien Sansour and Victory of the Word, facilitated by the National Arts Festival, Makhanda.

The house that Katriena Majiet built in this photograph would be 30 years old this year. Paul Grendon captured her building this house, a rondehuis, in a place called Sanddrift, near Steinkopf in what is today known as the Northern Cape. We see in the image that she is building her house from materials gathered from around her and she uses her physical strength to bend the frames which would later be enshrouded with woven grass mats. The mats will cover and shield against harsh sun during the day and cold air at night. What we also see, are her belongings and a person (a family member?) already inside this construction-in-process. In other words, she is building around what she already has, with what she has gathered and, around what she has gathered. At traditional architecture schools we do not learn about this particular intelligence of building and if we do it is framed as a tradition of the past, rather than a practice of the present. When we learn to make buildings in architecture schools, the traditional curriculum demands that we conceive of the new building as a potential new and empty space, later to be filled with things accumulated over time. The idea of the tabula rasa, a so-called ‘clean slate’ dominates the standard curriculum. Empty sites, vacant lots and open land is assumed and often a prerequisite, there to fill with ‘new’, ‘innovative’ ideas, held together with walls that would divide up the service spaces from the served spaces, the public spaces from the private spaces and the living spaces from resting spaces. Clarity and order is equated with elegance and sophistication.

But what we see in this photograph is a demonstration of a particular habit of assembly, a knowledge of construction and a method of gathering that does not easily distinguish between what is gathered and who is gathering. There is no linear notion and distinction between when is the time to gather and when is the space ready of gathering. Instead, we see a construction of life where both happens simultaneously, alongside each other and with other things (the water tank for instance is captured linking with the construction of the rondehuis and not apart from it.) The simultaneity of all orders captured in the image is a design intelligence worthy of paying attention to if we are serious about building new freedoms, new worlds and new habits.

‘Like I said, I think for me, that’s what that poem is about, off what Manolo says. We have to renew our habits of assembly. We have to really practice getting together in that double sense of the word “practice”—you know, it’s a praxis, it’s a thing that we engage in constantly. But we also have to keep trying to get better at it. We have to renew it; we have to regenerate it. So, yeah, that’s it. It’s renewal of our habits of assembly; I don’t know, I feel like that should be pretty much our only object of study’

Fred Moten^[1]

For the winter school we borrow from the poet Fred Moten (which he, in turn, borrows from Manolo Callahan) and extend the practice of Katriena Majiet in order for a renewed practice of space making. We propose ‘assembly’ in this case to mean both to gather as people and species; but also assembly as in ‘to put together’ the space for gathering. We imagine ourselves simultaneously as being assembled and that which is assembling. What are these habits then? How do we practice these habits of care, develop networks of collective freedoms and find sites of refusal and joy that exist amidst and often in spite of terrorism, predatory capital and colonial conquests? Can collective spatial practice renew and be renewed alongside these reflections?

^[1] https://southjournal.org/fred-moten/ accessed June 2021

The project is the refurbishment and repair of an old school building in Greatmore Street, Woodstock. The building is owned by the Western Cape Provincial Government and the University of the Western Cape is investing in the upgrade of the building in order to use it as an arts-based space of higher learning with a programme led by the Centre for Humanities research, a flagship humanities research unit.

Historical background

66 Greatmore is located in Woodstock, an area of Cape Town where turn-of the 20th century modern industrial development can be explicitly traced. The rapid growth of modern industry and capital required the implementation of major infrastructural, environmental and social transformation of the landscape. For example, in 1860 the Salt River Railway Works was built, an electrical tram-line was introduced in Victoria Road in 1890, and in 1912 the construction of the Eastern Boulevard (today known as Nelson Mandela Boulevard) and De Waal drive (Philip Kgosana Drive) began. In the 1940s Woodstock beach was reclaimed to accommodate the further growth of urban/industrial development along the railway lines. The implementation of the apartheid legislated Group Areas Act of 1957 saw the surrounding social landscape brutalised by forced removals and separate development of people according to constructions of race.

Parts of Woodstock were designated for those racialised as ‘white’, other parts were designated for groups of people racialised as ‘coloured’ under the Population registration Act of 1951. Although some parts of Woodstock were identified as grey areas, no part of Woodstock was zoned for those racialised as ‘black Africans’.

The school at 66 Greatmore Street was completed in 1916 and emerges as one of the first schools forming part of the 1910 Union of South Africa. It was called the ‘Regent Street School’, named after one of the adjacent streets. According to Sigi Howes, the head of the Wynberg-based Centre for Conservation Education, the Regent Street School is a typical Union of South Africa-era school, and an attempt by that government to provide places of instruction at primary school level for working class citizens. It was strategically located in Woodstock which at the time was experiencing a major industrial transformation and therefore the need for educational facilities for the children of parents who formed part of the new, mainly white working class of the area. The education system was based on Anglo-Victorian ideas of strict separation of activities of play from those of learning; the construction of genders by the separation of boys and girls outside the classrooms; and the extremely didactic styles of teaching. Learners were also closely monitored in an enclosed internal courtyard, and surrounding arched walkways, as well as a large playground overlooked and therefore monitored from classes and offices on the higher levels. The architecture followed this separatist and surveillance based educational ethos by duplicating stairs and entrances according to gender, dividing the playground down the middle with a fence and dividing the lower basement play area into two areas: one for boys and one for girls. The architects McGillivray & Grant Architects designed a building that had a Georgian style yet a modern industrial structure. Drawings dating from 1915 indicates a concrete structure, including a concrete flat roof, yet it made use of ornamental windows with timber frames, stained glass and timber shutters. The courtyard is surrounded by a classical arched walkway and ornate concrete balustrades on the upper walkways. The building was and still is double storey but includes an additionally lower level basement as part of a large playground to the north. The classrooms are of classic and generous proportions and the materiality is warm but resilient. Most of the services were not integrated and a separate toilet block was built further away from the main building.

The area of Woodstock is continually under major societal transformation and when the apartheid government’s Group Areas Act was introduced and implemented between 1957-1965 the school found itself bizarrely located within a ‘white group area’, while across the road, the area was declared a ‘coloured group area’. It was also during this time that the building underwent some major architectural adjustments. The timber louvers were removed, many of the timber sash windows were replaced with steel, the open terraces on roof level were enclosed, a new corrugated roof was added above the concrete roof and its tiled trimmings are removed. There was also more integration of services such as toilets and the large toilet block on the southern end of the site was demolished in.

The defining feature of the building is its open courtyard with arched walkway on ground floor and covered walkways on first floor. It is from this walkway that the classrooms surrounding the courtyard, are accessed. The walkway is generous and made of durable and hard-wearing materials. The south wing of classrooms, which faces the mountain, has two levels. The north wing of classrooms, which faces the harbour, has two main levels and a semi-basement level opening onto the playground. The building is placed centrally on an open site. The building functioned as a school for primary school children – ‘The Regent Street School’ – and as an educational facility right up to end of 2015 when it closed its doors.

Heritage Status

The site is located in a City of Cape Town Heritage Protection Overlay Zone (HPOZ) and the building is graded as a 3B heritage resource.

Proposed new work, new function, new approaches

New educational approach

The building is currently under the ownership of Provincial Government but the University of the Western Cape (UWC) has acquired a long term lease to occupy the building. The building is specifically been acquired by UWC for the use as arts based education for the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR), which includes, workshop areas, film and music studios as well as seminar spaces. The UWC/CHR has since its inception, been concerned with the connection between the humanities scholarship and the production of arts practices and the role it has to play in the production of new conceptions of social cohesion and anti-racism. As a historic black University, the agenda of social redress and collective work towards rebuilding society as antidote to racist regimes, is not new for UWC. While the function of the building will remain the same (education) the register will be distinctly different. Students will be encouraged to learn through play and experimentation, strict societal divides are explicitly challenged, and freedom to think and explore is the main driver of the CHR’s educational mandate.

New architectural features

The existing tall volumes, robust structure and open space make it ideal for the activities linked to the UWC/CHR but in certain areas the architecture must be adjusted to follow to suit and to adhere to contemporary building regulations. Overall, we would fit out and furnish the rooms to meet the standards of UWC. We also aim to refurbish and maintain the building to make it suitable and safe for use, since the building is in disrepair in many parts. In short, the heritage proposal is a conservation approach whereby the restoration of the building is largely in balance of the practical needs of the users and new building regulations.

New circulation core, lobby and lowered basement floor

The character of the building would remain largely untouched yet the main changes will occur along one of the circulation cores where there is a requirement for an elevator for universal access and a wider escape route and stairs. At the basement level we are proposing to fit out a workshop and this requires that the floor to ceiling must be increased as it currently does not comply. Because of this, some adjustments to the elevation would then be foreseeable.

New roof over courtyard

The courtyard presents an opportunity for UWC/CHR to organise large gatherings. We propose to cover the courtyard to protect it from wind and rain yet leave the sides open to allow proper ventilation of the space. The design, as illustrated in the amended drawings, is sensitive to the heritage resource in that it is not visible from the outside. From inside the courtyard roof is placed at the highest possible level, in order to maintain a sense of height and volume required of an institutional building. The high transparency level of the glass conserves the light quality of the space whilst maintaining responsible UV levels of the space.

New window frames and glazing

Most of the original timber frame windows have been replaced with steel frames during a 1960s maintenance upgrade. The windows facing Greatmore Street are the only remaining timber frame windows. For optimum climate and acoustic control we propose that all the steel frame windows be replaced with custom aluminium frames and new glazing. The timber frame windows on Greatmore Street would be repaired and reglazed as timber frames.

Ethical redevelopment

We are aware that 66 Greatmore is located within a historically and contemporary highly contested area regarding re-use of buildings and public spaces. We as a team, acknowledge that large parts of the Woodstock/Salt River area is under pressure from being transformed into privatised worlds of disintegrated economies and people. Our approach is that the 66 Greatmore project intervention should be an antidote to crude developments in the area, which causes homogenising of neighbourhoods and reverses some of the progress made in the democratic society. We have engaged with the principles of Ethical Redevelopment as outlined by artist and activist Theaster Gates as well as ideas around Repair as proposed by the artist Kader Attia as it applies to colonial and apartheid spatial history. We have also co-produced the architectural language and interventions around the ethics of the CHR and in conversation with scholars like Premesh Lalu, Heidi Grunebaum and others.

Relevant spatial frameworks

Our approach is also, to embed any work to 66 Greatmore within the Woodstock/ Salt River revitalisation framework as prepared by NM Associates Planners and Designers, dating from 2002. This document calls for sensitive reuse of heritage resources with particular emphasis on the upgrade of public spaces. 66 Greatmore is a publicly owned building with public investment (UWC) and its upgrade, spatial development as an arts-based educational facility for UWC would be in the interest of not only Woodstock communities, but of the metropole as whole.

It is for this reason that the heritage significance of the building covers a broad spectrum of related issues: social, technical and aesthetic and that respectful, mindful interventions should take cognisance of these overlaps. It does not necessarily propose that the aesthetics of the building be reinstated to the original state by, for instance including the original tiled roof areas, timber framed windows or concrete flat roof.

Our approach is based on an assessment of the existing building and proposes that the new users adjust their needs to fit the existing building and the site. No new structures are proposed on the site or as additions to the buildings, however we do propose a roof over the existing courtyard. The roof over the courtyard would allow maximum all-weather use of the space for the University and would be designed that it respects the character of the internal space and that it would not be visible from the street. Alteration of the existing fabric will largely revolve around meeting modern accessibility standards, meeting practical needs and rehabilitating built fabric.

Conclusion

The significance of the building and site lies in the fact that it served as an educational facility for its entire lifespan. It was constructed as one of the first Union Government Schools in the Western Cape. The architecture followed the Anglo-Victorian education ideology of separating genders; work from play; and allowing for strict surveillance of learners by teaches. The design followed classical proportions and decorum. Societal changes saw the demographics of the area engineered and also, again design changes ensued. The building experienced major changes in the 1960’s which neutralised the building’s character. The courtyard, the internal volumes and the access to open space and views is a significant heritage feature of the building, so too is its programmatic feature as an educational facility. With its overall neglect, haphazard use over the recent years, thus too, the significance of the building shifted and we are now, with its new potential occupation by UWC, on the precipice of a significant moment for the site and the building. Our intervention does not propose a change in the historic use of the building but it does propose that the circulation be altered to adhere to the progressive educational attitudes of UWC, as well as the requirement for universal wheelchair access. To make the courtyard more usable in all weathers we propose a roof. In order for the basement to comply, we propose a lowering of the floor areas and the concomitant changes to the elevation. An overall upgrade of the building regarding the repair of damaged areas is proposed, although we do not propose returning the building to its original form. In essence the design is a consequence of a thoughtful, ethical and collaborative process in order for UWC CHR, in partnership with Provincial Government, to do the important work of social cohesion through arts based higher education.

In 1969, in Botswana, Bessie Head built her house, Rainclouds, with the proceeds from her first novel ‘When Rainclouds gather’. It is in this house that she later, mostly in the evenings, wrote her landmark novel, ‘A Question of Power’. During the day she worked with other volunteers in Serowe as a gardener and as part of, Boiteko, a communal gardening project. The gardening project would later become a central part of her novel. It was also at this time that South Africa, her country of origin, was undergoing the most extreme and violent destructions of historic black neighbourhoods under the racist Group Areas Act. Bessie Head wrote that she is ‘mainly concerned with the manner in which the people lost the land’ and thus, saw her work as in conversation and in continuity with that of Sol Plaatje, who decades earlier documented the effect of the Land Act in ‘Native Life’ and for which she wrote the introduction to its republication in 1982.

Today the house is a Botswana national heritage site and this film attempts to thread together, her voice, her writing, her spatial practice and her conversation with the work of Sol Plaatje. It is within this context that we give thanks to Bessie Head, to Sol Plaatje, to prophetic constructions such as Rainclouds and Boiteko Garden, and to the people who made them.

Directed by Ilze Wolff

Edited By Khalid Shamis

Original Score by Cara Stacey

Cinematography by Heinrich Wolff, Lerato Maduna, and Malik Ntone Edjabe

With kind permissions from the Bessie Head Heritage Trust and the Khama III Memorial Museum, Serowe

Produced by Wolff Architects 2021

Conversation about the film at Chicago Architecture Biennial with Julie Nxadi, Cara Stacey, Khalid Shamis & Ilze Wolff.

Coordinated by Marguerite Wynter.

Access to the city is the primary ambition of this small scale, commercial development. The brief asked for two 60m² dwellings on each of the three adjoining properties. To accelerate the project timeline, departures and consolidation were avoided.

There is constant demand for small houses close to the opportunities of the city. The constant supply of expensive or large inner city houses produces an infrastructure that accommodates the elite and simultaneously excludes the poor.

Each of the houses have their own entrance , parking space and yard. Suburban pleasures are offered in the context of higher density living. Each of the houses face in opposite directions; this composition gives every house a direct and private relationship with its outdoor spaces.

These houses are moderately priced one, two and three bedroom dwellings. What makes their planning significant is the capacity for subdivision.

This studio for the Handspring Puppet Company is part of a series of spaces for art designed by Wolff Architects. In considering the appreciation of art, the situation of the encounter is of great significance. White box galleries and art fairs have all but flattened the experience of art as a commodity, situated in an emotionally desaturated white walled haze.

Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones are celebrated artists producing puppets predominantly for theatre productions. Their puppets are operated by puppeteers inside or next to the puppets and for this purpose their puppets are structured with very light frames of rattan or aluminium. Thin coverings are stretched over the frame. The sense of a living puppet is not achieved by dramatic gesture but rather the most subtle of movements; breath.

In designing this studio, we aimed at establishing an experience of intimacy in the production and appreciation of the puppets. The architecture generates its motives out of the artistry of the puppets. Like the puppets, the building has a principal frame and a light covering. Since the work of these puppeteers are destined for theatres, the studio replicates that atmosphere; it has a tall volume with hoisting hooks and lighting rigs. It can be filled with daylight, but it can also be darkened. The articulated timber wall surfaces avoid any comparison t0 generic white walled spaces. The overall composition of the building is a simple block with gentle distortions and apertures. The timber skin is enlivened on the street face with a composition of three panels; a sliding door, a clerestory window and a name board. On the opposite side of the building the timber skin dematerialises and is cut open; a high level opening which brings light into the main work space looks into the tops of the surrounding trees, a low level opening makes an aperture to an outdoor room which faces the garden.

The studio produces an intimate encounter with art. As a private workshop in a rural village it affords the artists a relaxed working space with features of a performance space. For the occasional visitor, the puppets are encountered as evolving artefacts situated amongst wood chips and drawings, production machines and the ever enthusiastic artists; an intimate and rare experience.