Architecture of the Transvaal

By Dieter Holm, Elise Labuschagne, Mike Keath, Schalk W. le Roux, Franco Frescura

Subjects: Architecture, History Of Art / Art & Design Styles, Republic of South Africa

Description: Architecture of the Transvaal is a seminal collection of writings by twelve South African architectural critics, each knowledgeable in his or her field of interest, on the rich and diverse heritage of the built environment of the region. It also presents an overview of the architectural heritage of South Africa. Many of the high-quality black-and-white illustrations appear here for the first time. The Transvaal, the name given to the region covered in these essays, in the history of the subcontinent is of short duration - a colonial invention - yet it does coincide with a geographic area straddling the Tropic of Capricorn, bound by the Vaal River to the south, the Limpopo River to the north, the Kalahari Desert to the west and Mozambique to the east. The area has a specific climate -temperate to hot summers with rains usually delivered in dramatic rolling thunderstorms, the winters warm and sunny and dry by day yet with night temperatures of around zero degrees Celsius and below with heavy frost. There is also a characteristic vegetation -tawny grasslands with bushveld scrub on the highveld changing to semi-arid desert in the west and subtropical humidity on the lowveld below the Drakensberg escarpment to the east. It is also the geographic area from which most of the architectural students come, from which most of the architects of the region graduate - from the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Pretoria - and in which most of the graduates practise. While following international trends, the architecture of the region is distinctive, reflecting home-grown interpretations, responding to the particular circumstances of the region, be they cultural, ideological, political, pragmatic, climatic or merely convenient. Dr Franco Frescura, past Director of Philatelic Services, past Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, University of Port Elizabeth, has published widely on shelter in southern Africa. Dr Elize Labuschagne, previously of the National Cultural History Museum, has researched the topic of traditional Trekker homes and interiors. She is now an interior design consultant in private practice. Dr Dieter Holm, Professor, past Head of the Pretoria School of Architecture, now Head of Postgraduate Studies and Research in the Division of Environmental Design & Management, University of Pretoria, is an expert in energy use and consultant as conservation architect. Dr Mike Keath, previously with the Division of Building Technology of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, now Deputy Chief Architect with the Department of Education and Culture, KwaZulu-Natal, is a recognised and published Baker authority. Dr Schalk le Roux, Professor and Head of the Pretoria School of Architecture, is a widely travelled and well-published scholar of Islamic architecture and an enthusiastic educator. Dr Roger Fisher, past Professor in the Pretoria School of Architecture, is a concerned educator, has a catholic range of interests and dabbles in architecture. Clive Chipkin, an architect in private practice in Johannesburg, is an enthusiastic architectural critic, idealist and teacher, and has authored the seminal work Johannesburg Style. Dr Walter Peters, Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Natal, is an award-winning architectural writer and scholar in the Germanic influences on southern African colonial architecture. Gus (Carl) Gerneke, erstwhile Senior Lecturer of the Schools of Architecture of both Pretoria and Cape Town, doyen of architectural education and mentor to many successful younger architects, is a respected critic, writer and provocateur. Prof Julian Cooke, Head of Graduate Studies, School of Architecture and Planning, University of Cape Town, is concerned with curriculum development and righting social inequalities and is a scholar of Modernism in South Africa. Dr Phillip Brittan is a practising architect, enthusiast, scholar and writer. Here he is assisted by the American architect Gary van Wyk. Dr Estelle Mare, Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Fine Art at Unisa, is a well-published academic architectural historian and critic with a keen interest in the philosophical and theoretical aspects of the discipline.