Me and my bud Bones studied under the wonderful, exciting, yet demandingly tough tutelage of Peter Rich. It was his zany lectures on the Master Architects and their buildings, and stories of his escapades and pilgrimages to the greatest buildings of the world that invigorated me to scour the globe for adventure, experience and googly-eyed architecture.
It has been a while since I ventured, but having had a gap in between jobs, I, with Ray, took a couple of days out to journey to a building that took us off the beaten track.
The building to which we travelled is called the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre. It is located to the north of South Africa in the Mapungubwe National Park which borders Zimbabwe and Botswana. The building won world recognition when it was awarded 'Best Culture Building of the Year' at the 2009 World of Architecture Festival.
It was designed and master-built by my lecturer and mentor Peter Rich, and moulded from the earth by the hands of the local community embodying the spirit of our Wits education-the romance of architecture, the utilisation of local materiality, use of local expertise, upskilling the locals, on-site design, and community engagement.
The landscape surrounding the site is vast and desolate,rocky and brittle. The red ochre earth is fertile to not much but the low lying shrubbery which peers enviously up to the tall, majestic, though alien-like boabas, some of which are the oldest in the world. The sky on our visit was deep blue harbouring lengthy stratus clouds eager to dock, clock and offload some much needed rain. The lengthy ribbon-like racing strip of road alongside the site is vast, never ending and monotonous.
Against the grain of this setting emerges an extraordinary outcrop. And from that extraordinary outcrop tumbles an extraordinary edifice. The Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre.
Morphing technology with local endeavour, its voluminous, sail-like vaults flag its presence from afar as it pokes its head high above the hilltop. As the building begins to cascade down into a valley like a slinky down a ziggurat, the play of levels, stairs and ramps keep visitors moving, enticing all to explore. Elevated platforms and lengthy walkways are formed to offer unimpeded views of bulbous baobabs sitting squat across the lunar landscape. The collision of landscape and building creates hidden nooks and frames opening up portals to immense vistas. The building's colours and heavy, grainy texture coarse and rough like an elephant's skin, mimic the autumnal-coloured Mopani trees that inhabit the expansive landscape, giving one the sense that it was always there.
The architect dragged a pathway which swoops and swings around the building affording ogglers views of the Centre from all angles, heights and distances. The amphitheatre, a centerpiece, becomes the backdrop for supermodels in Jackie O sunnies to fill their Insta feed.
In the amoebic-shaped reflection pools, we can see further the hand of Peter's sketches coming to life as the walls of the pools weave and meander as free-hand pencil lines.
Although it appears organic, there is an exciting underlying formal geometry at play.
Peter designed not so much a building as a landscape raised, inflated and thinned to create a playful, tactile and engaging edifice to reveal the story and the rich history of the Mapungubwe Kingdom. Ray and I were fortunate to experience this.
4 comments:
Lekker my man...what a kick-@ss design this is...still amazes me every time I see pictures of it. What was it like to experience the spaces in and around?
You know dude, i saw a BIG architects building in New York in 2019. sure they are scintillating in the glossy mags, but you then go there and theyre souless shiny clunks of fools gold. this building is what it is. it was built with the same soul as it was drawn. quite remarkable.
the natural light he brought into the spaces, in the vaulted volumes, really stunning and peaceful. the one downfall was the ugly air con units that sit on the walls. just darn right savagery
That is so true my man. I have felt the same. Big money spent by people who don't really care. Architecture like Peter's is care without big money spent. I am sure the building was designed to be naturally ventilated, and then someone came in afterwards and just started putting in aircons without a care for the building ;-) Sounds amazing.....one day I have to go experience it myself.
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