Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

Refilwe Business Node Upgrades / Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers

Architects: Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers
Location: Refilwe, Metsweding, Pretoria South Africa
Project Team: Margueritte Pienaar, Morne Pienaar, Walter Raubenheimer, Anja Bredell-Oliver
Interior Décor: Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers
Project Year: 2012
Photographer: Walter Raubenheimer
Website: www.holmjordaan.co.za

Structural Engineers: Bigen Africa Services
Electrical Engineers: Bigen Africa Services
Landscape Architects: Insite Landscape Architects
Quantity Surveyor: Bigen Africa Services
Project Managers: Bigen Africa Services
Town and Regional Planners: Maxim Planning Solutions
Environmental and OHS: Nemai Consulting
Contractor: Excell Homes and Moeng Civils and Construction JV

- 09 April 2017
- Datum Editorial
Urban , Urban Renewal , Urban Architecture , Selected Works , Modern Africana , African Modernity , African Modernism , Transit Oriented ,

From The Architects:
Refilwe nodal transformation forms part of an urban network of upgrades supported by the Neighbourhood Development Partnerships Grant, National Treasury, in the Metsweding area, City of Tshwane. This upgrade albeit a small and humble urban intervention, serves as an example of a local community taking great pride in the renewal of public space.

Refilwe Business Node Upgrades / Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers

By simply formalizing open space through provision of a permeable edge condition, the area in front of various small shops was upgraded. An open-ended, covered area along the new periphery houses basic amenities of ablution, water, roof shelter and seating – while leaving a framework for a series of programmatic interventions, such as a car wash, waiting areas for taxi drop-off, hawkers accommodation and so on.

Refilwe Business Node Upgrades / Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers

Along with patterns recalling local tradition, Maraba-raba and chess play boards are part of the horizontal field that binds the spatial diagram together. Robustness in design drove overall outcomes. As a result, apertures are screened off but no glass panes are included, and stainless steel and hidden fixtures were used for all sanitary ware.

Refilwe Business Node Upgrades / Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers

The brick screens also helped to create a building interface with no “front and back” – usually a challenge given programmatic requirement of public ablutions in such central locations. Bright colour gives new identity to this small urban hub.

Refilwe Business Node Upgrades / Holm Jordaan Architects and Urban Designers

The local community was involved in the construction of the project and has taken great pride in this small, colourful intervention. During 2014 the area in front of the existing shops became a space for service-delivery protests. Not a single building or structure was damaged, attesting to the ownership taken by the local community.

CLICK TO REVIEW LINKED STORY

Taxi Rank No. 2 / 26'10 South Architects
Diepsloot is the kind of environment that requires input from the best, most courageous and inspired architects. It is not every architect who would have the patience and willingness to learn from this environment, or the humility necessary to create opportunities and bring human dignity to it...

- © Refilwe Business Node Upgrades Holm Jordaan and...
- © Refilwe Business Node Upgrades Holm Jordaan and...
- © Refilwe Business Node Upgrades Holm Jordaan and...
- © Refilwe Business Node Upgrades Holm Jordaan and...
- © Refilwe Business Node Upgrades Holm Jordaan and...
- © Refilwe Business Node Upgrades Holm Jordaan and...

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

If you want your own avatar and keep track of your discussions with the community, sign up to archiDATUM >>

SELECTED WORKS

- The Mzamba Community Schools / Technical University of Munich
- 08 Sep 2016
The Mzamba Community Schools in Eastern Cape of South Africa are a community approach to sustainable and 'renewable architecture' by the ...
- Old Mutual Central Campus / Perry + Anderson Architecture
- 05 Dec 2017
This project was to create a new business school for the Old Mutual Investment Group. Careful consideration of the existing campus of bui...
- Office of The Auditor General/ Wasserfall Munting Architects
- 20 Jul 2015
Architecturally speaking, the biggest challenge was to design a building with a language and overall expression befitting the image and s...

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIRECTORY

- Women’s Opportunity Center / Sharon Davis Design
- 21 Jan 2016
Located on a one-hectare site in the Kayonza district in eastern Rwanda, the Women’s Opportunity Center is energizing one small community...
- Nettleton 195 / SAOTA
- 05 Dec 2017
Our client purchased the site, after we had completed an initial Design Concept for the previous property owner. Our client loved the des...
- Villa Z / Mohammed Amine Siana
- 30 May 2016
The Villa Z is a product of very strict city regulations, ones that ultimately confined the building into a 15m distance in a tight squar...