Future Cities

Historic cities, contemporary cities, and cities of the future are about more than just built density. Buildings downtown simply set the stage for action, interaction and the everyday life that creates a city.

Just as it is important to plan a city, it is important to remember that the life can also be planned out of a city. The idea of regulation of cities and public spaces still seems to excited planners, almost 18 years after the end of Apartheid. These planners are obsessed with the creation of instant high streets, plazas and promenades - connecting no place to nowhere. Authentic cities grow organically over time. This fixation with the creation of over regulated plastic spaces has spurned “instant cities” -developments like Montecasino, and Melrose arch. These pastiche, stuck on ‘emblems of cities’, are void of authenticity or evolved context - the urban ideal of the chronically dispossessed. We seem to have forgotten that more important than merely how a city looks, is how it works – a city cannot exist in the designed confines of an entrance and exit boom gate!

While the suburban North of Johannesburg is increasingly dominated by new buildings; housing projects, shopping malls and office parks - each development outdoing its neighbor in the stakes for dullness, and regimentality, old buildings downtown give the city energy, vibrancy and authenticity. Old building stock also offers the opportunity for re -exploration, adoption and re-use – key factors in future sustainable world city development.

It’s frustrating that some architects and planners still see the property boundary as the end of their design responsibility. This tendency leads to the creation of buildings which contribute little or nothing to the urban environment.

The renowned American Urbanist Jane Jacobs, said “Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets”. A city is not simply a collection of buildings created in a void, with streets as a left over space between – the city is a living organism, and as its main public spaces, the streets, are its arteries. In the early 2000’s Urban Ocean, the now jaded pioneers of downtown cool, used Jacob’s quote in a sales brochure– ultimately, they were predicting their own demise. At that stage the streets of Johannesburg were empty, uninviting, and unsafe- the rebirth of a city starts on the street, not the other way around.

When people say that a city is dangerous – perceived or real, they mean that they don’t feel safe on their pavement. 

Sandton Central, is a prime example of a collection of buildings which do not create a city, even though some of the office blocks in the district are architecturally interesting, they are created in an unwalkable, unsustainable vacuum. You can’t force people to use streets that they have no reason to use, and Sandton certainly has no street culture.  

Even new Sandton Buildings, like the iconic 17 Alice lane, turn their backs on the street. Instead of stairs to a lobby, this building is set back from the street, behind a giant concrete car park. Considering the current international trend toward sustainable, walkable urban environments, it seems that Sandton Central is developing on a course towards obsoletion.

Johannesburg Central is a well connected, pedestrian orientated node; the bustling city streets have brought life back to the CBD. Downtown streets are social spaces, community nodes, explosions of colour, energy, and daily interaction. A good example of a successful city retails area - Kerk Street, is a vibrant padestrianised urban mall, here the formal and informal thrive alongside each other – office workers, shoppers, school children and city residents walk, browse, interact, and create a sustainable city.

Through narrowing the trafficable street area, the upgraded Main Street Mall in the financial district now offers wide, New York-esque sidewalks. Broad pavements provide space for pedestrians  -this has in turn spurred the re emergence of downtown café culture -office workers desk bound for decades, too afraid to walk on their own pavements, now venture back into the city streets, creating a node alive with daily activity and interaction. The opportunities for a regenerated city- so far as streetlife goes – endless.

If streets are the arteries of the city, parks and urban squares should be where the city comes alive. Beyers Naude Square, Johannesburgs’ premier civic space, seems to have the makings of a successful urban oasis; it is well located, in a mixed use node, with office, civic and residential buildings on its periphery, which should ensure almost 24 hour usage, yet the space remains empty and unused. Rather than stimulating visual and sensual delight, the square exudes a feeling of dullness, emptiness and blankness. A park is like giant green convenience store – it needs to offer goods in demand in order to attract users and activity – Beyers Naude Square certainly falls miles short in this respect. Why create more parks in downtown Johannesburg when the ones we already have are poorly planned, badly maintained and underutilsed? There is tremendous possibility to ensure the sustainability and renewed redevelopment of the city through the creation of successful urban squares and parks. The city needs to tackle existing unsuccessful urban green space, ensuring that this goal becomes a reality.  

Johannesburg needs to be seen as a living organism; it is difficult to chart the trajectory of where the city is heading, but certainly the future of downtown is vibrant, creative, dynamic and sustainable!

Johannesburg embodies authenticity, grit, inclusivity, multicultural diverse democratic flavor, rich historical context, unexplored experiences, new and authentic environments, patina, history, reinvention, rebirth, exploration, and discovery. How long will we continue to accept the fake, the copy, The Truman Show, the commercially driven knock off, when the authentic original is right in front of us and ripe for the taking? The city is finally transforming from a place for people with nowhere else to go, into the destination for a generation with the world on our doorstep!

Timeless Architecture

What do I think makes timeless architecture ?

I think that I am probably still too young to be qualified to answer this question! The famed modern movement architect Le Corbusier, coined the phrase “a house is a machine for living in”. The clean dynamic lines of the modern movement are probably the embodiment of timelessness -buildings like Corb’s Villa Savoye, designed in 1928, are still as fresh toady as they were 83 years ago! The concept of timelessness seems to be about architecture or design which can transcend fashion. A building like Ponte City in Berea, once the embodiment of urban hip and privilege, has transformed and morphed into a monument to urban decay, white fear and the unknown, yet Ponte still captures our imagination, and is as much a part of the collective conscious of Johannesburg today as when it was built in 1976! While the average suburbanite will never visit Berea, or set foot in a building like Ponte, 35 years later Ponte remains synonymous with Johannesburg, its elegant form imprinted on every iconic Johannesburg skyline. Ponte has transcended the spirit of the time when it was built – adapting to a completely new and different context , a symbol of the contemporary city – Perhaps Ponte is timeless? Good architecture should capture our imagination and inspire us, timeless architecture has the power to do this!

Hope this is ok!
Like I said, your questions are VERY insightful. Hehe!

AZA 2010


I had a conversation about the city with a friend of mine, Werner Kirchoff, the other day. He told me how in his youth he had carved the bases of the flag spires of Anglo Americans stately head office at 45 Main Street.
Standing on Main Street, between the imposing buildings of 44 and 45 there is an overwhelming feeling of permanence, capitalist power, European empire and African history. This is the South African Base of the largest gold mining company in the world! The mall between the buildings is spotless. Apart from the occasional corporate employee darting to an urgent meeting, the street is silent. These stately buildings seem to have existed for millennia, yet I was talking to someone who crafted these monuments in his lifetime.

The conversation highlighted the fact that our Architectural history in Johannesburg is relatively speaking, exceptionally young. The oldest surviving building (in the broadest sense of the term) in the city, the Rissik Street Post Office, built in 1885, is by international standards an infant.

Yet Johannesburg is a rapidly expanding, morphing, shifting, vibrant city. In its short lifetime is has witnessed change and uncertainty which belie the citie’s youth.
Established in 1886, the ZAR government of the time had little faith in the mining camps longevity. By 1889 the reef gave way to rotten pyretic ore which refused to yield any gold –Johannesburg panicked, mines became unprofitable and mining shares crashed almost overnight. ‘’grass will grow on the streets of Johannesburg’’ declared a young mining executive – Percy Fitzpatrick.

History proved otherwise. By 1893, The Goldfields Company of South Africa sent hopes soaring with the announcement that shafts could be sunk to a depth of 5 thousand feet. Johannesburg was saved, its future secured.

The citie’s detractors have been putting nails in Johannesburg’s coffin for over a century – the partial collapse of the CBD in late 80s and white flight to the perceived safety of Sandton and the North is only a more recent chapter in Johannesburg’s chequered history.

My mother used to push me in my pram around the shopping level at Ponte City. Ponte was the embodiment of urban hip- the place to be- the best address in town! –in my lifetime Ponte has transformed into a monument to urban decay, crime, white fear, urban legend, and the unclaimed, unexplored unknown.

Yet how is the contemporary city different to the city our parents knew and largely abandoned? The city our grandparents and great grandparents created.

When I tell people I own the penthouse in the old art deco Ansteys building, reactions span a broad spectrum.

I’m going to make a generalisation and stereotype groups of people and their perceptions of the city, its history and potential.

There are the urban nostalgists, people from my grandparents generation - they are enthralled- reminiscing about the city they remember. The elegant Art Deco buildings of Johannesburg; their impossible sky scraping height soaring above the bustling city side walks.

Conversation inevitably turns to Smokers Corner, the legendary tobacconist with an island shop at Manners Mansions. Shopping at Stuttafords, or John Orrs, and tea on the 4th floor terrace of Ansteys. The lift operators – announcing the different departments from floor to floor, gentlemen in suits and ladies in hats and gloves.
Elegant department stores and window shopping on Eloff Street after a night at His Majesties, or under the stars at the Coliseum. Office workers taking lunch in Oppenheimer Park, with the bronze impala fountain and listening to the clock at the Rissik Street Post office chiming every hour.
Johannesburg was the city of privilege and exclusion. Access by elements deemed undesirable, was heavily restricted – privilege of the few at the expense of the masses.

However, a rich and inclusive social history emerges from this time.
Johannesburg is the city where Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo practised law from Chancellor House; Joe Slovo had offices at His Majesties. The Playwright and anti apartheid activist Cecil Williams, who was arrested together with Nelson Mandela in1962, had a penthouse at Ansteys. Johannesburg was the city of the young Mahatma Gandhi, his passive resistance movement was born virtually across the road from the current 45 Main Building.

Most of my grandparent’s generation have not been near town in 30 years. They assume I must be a very successful architect to have a city penthouse, and that my neighbours are all successful bankers or movie stars – I do own the ex chairman of the Johanesburg Stock Exchanges Manhattan style residence. It’s better that these people don’t visit the city again. Their city exisits solely as a memory, real and vivid, it lives with them.

His Majesties is now a Discom, the lavish marble foyer replaced by banks of tills and cheap ceramic tiles, The Coliseum was demolished in the 80’s, Stuttafords is a stripped out shell, The famous Ansteys department store windows are now ‘dressed’ in dirty steel roller shutters. The Rissik Street Post Office owned by the city, was gutted by fire last November. Solid restoration plans have yet to materialise. The impala fountain in Oppenheimer Park has been evacuated to the safety of the much gentrified financial district. Yet you can still feel the energy of greatness, past and future - history lives in the city!

Then there is the urban pessimist, probably from my parent’s generation. This generation is generally surprised that anyone would still want to inhabit or invest capitol in a city that they left for dead, and abandoned decades ago. Johannesburg is perceived as a no go zone. The CBD for them automatically means the faux city – Sandton, Montecasino, Melrose Arch. They subscribe to the urban nostalgist view of the ideal Johannesburg, the heavily regulated, controlled, monitored, sanitised capitol of an apartheid state.
The American economist and social scientist Mancur Olson noted that the decline of regions is the result of an organizational and cultural hardening of the arteries, which he called “institutional Sclerosis”. Places that grow up and prosper in one era, find it difficult and often impossible to adapt to new organizational and cultural patterns. Consequently, innovation and growth shift to new places.
Rather than engage in the transformation of Johannesburg into a multicultural diverse post apartheid city, these people decamped, shifting to new decentralised cities. Rather than address new realities, they simply designed them away. In a society where public space could no longer be controlled, it was simply eradicated. Ready made cities were created, void of authentic historical context and without reference to an awkward but important history. Bunkers, with no relationship to the street or public environment. New access controlled and monitored high streets designed, facades of an unreal unlived history connecting unspecific areas to non existent communities. History is recreated along nostalgist ideals, sanitised pseudo historic cities, cut and pasted at will. Perhaps archaeologists finding the remains of Montecasiono or Fourways will assume that Johannesburg had in fact been conquered by Tuscan colonists! Are we so uncomfortable with addressing and dealing with our country’s history that we create a faux one to mask our true past? Maphela Ramphele speaks of the African custom of calling a ghost by its name to lay it to rest – contemporary South Africans seem to simply deny our ghosts ever existed.


Ill call the last group of people the new urbanites. These largely fall into my generation, although there are notable exceptions.
Viewing the city as a vibrant minefield of potential, craving real experiences, in genuine, unique environments rich in history and context.. These people want to experience real life in a genuine city. This is a move away from previous attempts to recreate pseudo environments, void of context and history, cities in the suburbs.
Authenticity comes form various aspects of an environment: historic buildings, established neighbourhoods, local culture. It is present in the urban mix in Johannesburg, the juxtaposition of street vendors and international institutions; urban grit alongside renovated buildings; bankers and yuppies walking next to mielie sellers on the street. An authentic place offers unique and unexpected experiences. A place full of chain stores and chain restaurants with no relation to the genius loci is not authentic. Cities are about the unexpected, the gallery ‘discovered’ around the corner, the coffee shop with no name with the Ethiopian hostess who serves freshly brewed Ethiopian coffee to her family at the same table as her patrons, in a building formerly occupied by a British Gentlemen’s club, or a Jewish doctors consulting rooms. A rooftop party with a sweeping view of the city at an architects penthouse. The city is a multi cultural and historical area, and provides a backdrop for interaction between people from very diverse segments of society.

Unfortunately much of the redevelopment of the city has followed a pattern of large companies buying up old buildings and refurbishing them along similar generic lines of mass, mid income rental housing stock. The intrinsic value of these buildings, their history, the patina of time, is overlooked. How is this model really any different from Paulshof or Midrand? Granted, the buildings in town are far prettier, but it’s the same concept.

Positive development of historical contexts is certainly emerging. The fantastic refurbishment of the old turbine hall for Anglogold Ashanti, the Barbican building left to rot for decades had been completely restored, Buildings like 87 Commissioner converted into trendy loft apartments, without stripping away the age and history of the structure. Creative communities finding new homes in formerly abandoned warehouses at Arts on Main, renewed interest in iconic old buildings like Ansteys.

Johannesburg is a diverse and inclusive environment. If the heritage aspect of this area is respected, it will retain its spirit as a unique, authentic, inclusive environment. Perhaps this is because my generation is able to view the city with fresh vision, unencumbered by experiences or preconceptions of past generations. Our genuine, collective history is there for us to rediscover, reimagine and refine, creating our own authentic future.

Writing on one of the paintings of a photograph taken by a street photographer in Johannesburg (Joburg ArtCity project), Mike Alfred (Sunday Times Lifestyle, September 2002) comments:
Occupying three levels of the Kazerne parking exit of Queen Elizabeth Bridge, Karin Preller offers a grey canvas which shows two women family members Rienie and Petronella, Johannesburg 1950s. Fashionably dressed in the “new look”, as was customary then for a trip into “town”, they were probably shopping. The Lightbody’s (gentlemen’s outfitters) sign is clearly visible.
The painting uses as inspiration an old photo taken by a street photographer. He might possibly have been a rare downtown dark businessman. The two women shopped in a “protected” space in which other races were not absent, but largely invisible. Stuttafords, Ansteys, and John Orrs were exclusive, where haughty, formally costumed shop assistants looked down their narrow white noses. Black people heaved the goods behind the scenes. The picture exudes white nostalgia:
“Let’s take a tram into town this morning; we’ll shop and lunch and then take in a matinee at the Colosseum.” It depicts a world forever gone, certainly not recaptured in Joburg’s magnificent, laager-like, shopping malls. As does Schadeberg, Preller jolts us with remembered history.