Description
The School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg was established in 1921. Initially, the teaching in the school was in the Beaux Arts tradition “based on classical concerns and how they could be interpreted eclectically” (Keeling, 2014, p. 5). This, however, changed in the 1930s through direct contact and interaction between lecturers at the school, chiefly Rex Martienssen, and leading Modernist architects such as Le Corbusier. Martienssen became friends with Le Corbusier in 1934 and visited him in the south of France in 1938 (Benton, 2023, p. 53).
The lecturers in the school established a workspace called “Studio Seven” which allowed staff to have limited professional practice while teaching at the university. Studio Seven along with other architects predominantly from Johannesburg led to the formation of the Transvaal Group, a “loosely constituted alliance of progressive practitioners, teachers and students of the School of Architecture, a coterie of kindred spirits which Le Corbusier dubbed Le Groupe Transvaal” (Herbert and Donchin, 2013, p. 198).
The lecturers at the school had a tradition of designing buildings on the university campus, including early Modernist icons such as the 1939 Hillman Building. This continued in 1954, with the growth of the Faculty of Architecture to include the Department of Quantity Surveying, a diploma in Town Planning and classes in Fine Art, when the university commissioned a customised building to be named after John Moffat, a prominent architect and benefactor. The staff members of Studio Seven were asked to undertake the project with the head of school, John Fassler, leading the project.
The resulting building was a departure from the typical International Style Modernism that had come to characterise much of the work of the school. The building was laid out with a T-shaped plan. The four-storey north-facing wing of the building contained well-lit studio spaces while the three-storey southern wing (the leg of the T-shaped plan) accommodated lecture theatres on the ground floor, a dedicated architecture library on the first floor and offices on the second floor above. Internally, the building’s focal point is an open spiral terrazzo staircase that connects all of the levels. Externally, the school, which is located on the terraced and landscaped main axis of the campus, focuses around a large reflecting pond.
The concrete frame of the building is modularly segmented using classical proportioning systems and a regular gridded structure with repeated and uniform windows and a colonnaded entrance. This design concept is paired with a restrained material palette of cast terrazzo facing, steel-framed windows and decorative mosaic panels.
Internally the building was more expressively designed.The building was fitted out with brightly coloured linoleum floors (geometrically patterned in the main foyer spaces), walls painted in a carefully considered customised mixed colour palette to enhance the spatial experience of the building and bespoke furniture largely designed by Tomaselli (1915-2004).
The building that resulted “is almost a style of its own” (Keeling, 2014, p. 6–7), combining the individual styles and interactions of the six members of the design team who were also the clients and end users of the building. The John Moffat Building is a hybrid combination of the modernist teachings of Le Corbusier and classical architectural principles (graphically shown in the emblematic use of Le Corbusier’s Modulor and Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man as part of the visual language of the building). The end result is possibly best described by Gilbert Herbert in his biography of early modernism in Johannesburg as “a unique synthesis of many individuals each contributing to the whole” (Herbert and Donchin, 2013, p. 198). The well-loved building was seen by many as a rejection of the uncompromising requirements of International Style Modernism and an attempt to create a more tempered modernist architecture that could respond to both context and the layered history of architecture taught therein.
The building has served as the home of the School of Architecture and Planning for more than six decades now, with new annexes added to house the growing student body, workshops, computer labs and studios.
References
Benton, T. (2023). The Painter Le Corbusier. Basel: Birkhäuser.
Herbert, G. (1975). Martienssen & the International Style. Cape Town: A. A. Balkema.
Herbert, G. and Donchin, M. (2013). The Collaborators: Interactions in the Architectural Design Process. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Howie, W. D. (1959). “The John Moffat Building, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg”. In: South African Architectural Record. November 1959, pp. 16–27.
Keeling, C. (2014). The John Moffat Building: A Conservation Report. Johannesburg: Wits School of Architecture and Planning.
Main façade of the southern administrative wing (left), northern studio wing (right) and reflecting pond.
The classically proportioned colonnaded main entrance leading into the main foyer with the library above.
View out from the main foyer to the pond. Note the cast terrazzo finish of the external façade.
Looking down the terrazzo-finished spiral main staircase to an original Cecily Sash mosaic on the lower ground floor.
Originally published in: Uta Pottgiesser, Ana Tostões, Modernism in Africa. The Architecture of Angola, Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Birkhäuser, 2024.