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Gauteng Provincial Legislature
Central Johannesburg, Gauteng
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Click to view large map Coordinates: | This project was the repurposing of the former Johannesburg City Hall. The transference of the Johannesburg City Council to the new Johannesburg Civic Centre in 1972 left the old City Hall in its central position on Rissik-Market-Simmonds-President streets under-utilised and seemingly obsolescent. Ideas for the transference of governance at provincial level from Pretoria [from the then Transvaal Provincial Administration Headquarters Building] to Johannesburg were in the air before South Africa's first democratic election in 1994. The idea of transference to the old City Hall was promoted by Neil Fraser and Nigel Mandy in conjunction with the old unreformed City Council in 1993. The practice Fassler Kamstra & Holmes Architects was the natural choice for this project. They had shown concern for the conservation of the old City Hall building and they were attuned, at least since 1984, to inner-city civic space, before the ill-fated Civic Spine proposals of 1986-87. In March 1994 Marcus HOLMES was called to a meeting convened by Fraser and Mandy where he was asked: "What would need to be done to move the Provincial Legislature to the City Hall?" They thought, Holmes explains, that this was an opportune moment to move the seat of power for the province to Johannesburg. Work to realize this idea commenced immediately with hardly more than letters of intent. Despite the obvious spatial and logistical difficulties, the absence of accurate measured drawings, the endless complications of implanting modern services in an old Edwardian building with "rat infested tunnels and ducts saturated with the dust of ages", the feverish recycling programme began on time in April. The labour intensive project for the removal of mountains of rubble and waste from the site was a joint venture by MURRAY AND ROBERTS, on the one hand, and LTA on the other. The professional team worked 20 hours a day, 7 days a week. Marcus recalls: I worked 5000 hours that year. I would meet the consultants at 3 in the morning because consultants don't have excuses at 3 in the morning. We built a R78 million project in seven and a half months. It is important to record the architects' design philosophy. They were deeply responsive to HAWKE and McKINLAY's corporate neo-classicism of 1910 reinterpreted to reflect the presence of the new democratic settlement. Holmes continues: "I started by stripping out all of the accumulations — the false ceilings, the partitions etc. — just stripping the building back to its bones. The architects created large open spaces by removing all cross-walling and then planning state-of-the-art Grade A office accommodation inside the historic shell with 'undetermined options for open plan or cellular offices. They preserved historic panelling and enrichment, but used glazed partitions and contemporary office furniture to reflect modernity. They converted the old Selborne Hall — scene of protest meetings and lectures over the decades — into the new chamber for the Gauteng Provincial Legislature. They overlaid the stale pale cream and white colour scheme with distinctly new colour layers consistent with new democratic inclusiveness. Mira FASSLER KAMSTRA worked out the colour palette comprising 110 to 120 colour pigments, including an African chromatic range of ochres and earth reds — replacing the dullness of the post-Edwardian past with the vibrations of a new society. Despite the evident achievements, Marcus Holmes concludes: "The sadness of that building is that so much wasn't done. "The exterior was never repaired and enhanced, nor the staining on the stonework removed. The interior carpets, obviously promoted by some persuasive carpet salesman, ended up as the "ugliest you can imagine". Nevertheless, the building was ready for the new Provincial Legislature that assumed office after the democratic process of 1994. (Extracted from Chipkin 2008:390-393). ’Her [FASSLER KAMSTRA] firm of architects was commissioned to refurbish the Johannesburg City Hall in six months, for use as the the head-quarters of the PWV regional legislature. *** "Our little firm has worked 14 hours a day, sometimes having to produce 30 drawings a week, to complete the project as soon as possible," she [Fassler Kamstra] explains. The work has certainly paid off. For the refurbishing of the ceremonial entrance in Rissik Street, her firm won the 1994 Dulux Award for the use of paint in a commercial interior. Although the City Hall was built in 1912 and then altered in 1938, there were no ac curate plans of the building, which created a huge problem for the architects. Fassler-Kamstra's architect father, Professor John FASSLER, had always been interested in the City Hall and had started collecting what plans there were, years ago. But the best available plan was still a metre out in one direction. ”The biggest challenge we faced was how to service the building with air-conditioning, lighting and acoustics, without destroying the architectural qualities," Fassler-Kamstra says. This resulted some clever lateral thinking. The corridors had double ceiling-space and air-conditioning ducts could be accommodated here. But the problem arose in the offices, where ceilings had to be lowered and dormer windows created in the ceilings to accommodate the top of the old windows. The City Hall is a classical building based on a rectangular plan incorporating offices around a series of courtyards. Communal areas, such as restaurants, cafeterias, and now a gym, create bridge areas between the courtyards, linking the offices on opposite sides of the rectangle. The only completely new part of the building is the legislative chamber which seats 85 people. Colour has not only been used as a joyous celebration of the new South Africa but also functionally, to characterise each of the five floors by using different colour associations. "We chose rich earthy colours such as Red Sand and Georgian Clay to show the colours of Africa. To this we've added other colours, such as gold and green. Gold is of ten used in classical architecture, but I also felt it was symbolic of Johannesburg because the city grew from the discovery of gold."This use of strong. colour immediate creative brought controversy. The 60 va-riations originally chosen by her firm have been reduced to 20 and the contract for the interior design of the last three floors of the building given to another firm.’ [Morrell, Sue in interview with Mira Fassler Kamstra 'Public buildings for the future Daily Dispatch (East London) 1994 11 01]. References:
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