Description

Built by architects Hallen, Dibb & Partners (architect of record: Hans Hallen), the Mabel Palmer Hall of Residence was designed together with the John Bews Hall of Residence (1964) and Scully Dining Hall (1966) in a unified, stylistic idiom of “romantic” Brutalism (Greig, 1971, p. 113). They display strong geometric forms, a palette of austere, off-shutter concrete and facebrick, and timber screens and railings, with lightweight aluminium adjustable-louvre glazing. Perhaps surprising, the apartheid state in South Africa embraced the Modern Movement,and Brutalism in particular, with its raw, muscular display of concrete and the textural earthiness of clay-tiling and facebrick. Using this idiom, Hans Hallen achieved a landscaped ensemble with structurally bold and highly adventuresome interiors for the delight of the students.

Programmatically, the halls reflected an English “Oxbridge” influence, where privileged white students could study and live sociably, and eat together, wearing formal academic gowns. Sixty years on, the student population is racially diverse, the dining hall has become a gymnasium and the raw concrete surfaces are brightly painted.

In concept, each hall is centred around its own atrium. Geometrically, however, the spatial planning and cross-sections of each building could not be more diverse. Stylistically ⎯ in their monumentality and interior manipulation of light ⎯ the inspiration by Louis Kahn is evident. But the style here is more playful and less solemn, with circulation bridges, skylights and multi-tiered levels activating movement and views throughout. Functionally, the multi-storeyed atrium, as a typological form, aids cross-ventilation, reduces humidity and modifies heat gain.

The halls were intended to be appreciated three-dimensionally, as a set of “monumental sculptures” in a densely vegetated coastal sub-tropical landscape. Hillside terrain and coastal bushland dominate the campus setting. The daily circulation, when students return on foot from the hilltop lectures and libraries to the halls of residence, is downhill, with a sequence of partial views of façades and roofscapes, cloaked in vegetation. Walking along a network of ramped footpaths, seated forecourts and terraced stairways, the impact of gravity is lessened by manipulation of steep contours around and views between structures, and by directional shifts in movement routes up and down the slope. Hallen’s campus grouping has been likened to “spotting rhinoceroses ….. glimpsed amongst the foliage” (Fisher and Clarke, 2014, p. 64).

The twin halls of women’s residence Mabel Palmer were the last of the trio to be built. The plan resembles a quadrangular layout, but is entirely roofed over with a hyperbolic paraboloid shell plunging down to central supporting columns in a triumph of concrete construction. Positioned amongst the sub-tropical vegetation, below the campus spine of King George V Avenue, it presents a unique, fifth-elevation roofscape, and gives the building its dramatic, internal views.
The central supporting columns, containing structural rainwater downpipes, form the fulcrum around which multi-level circulation bridges and staircases branch out in four directions to the perimeter bedroom corridors. These provide further interest to the triple-volume atrium, with the eye drawn naturally upwards to the unique, oversailing roof and ventilating clerestory.
Externally the elevations were repetitively articulated by full-length, adjustable glazed louvres to the bedrooms. The ribbed off-shutter concrete façade provides a low-maintenance solution of high quality and strong tactile materiality. Exterior surfaces were eventually painted and the slender louvre windows replaced, and the corner common rooms have been converted to kitchens and laundries. The atrium has maintained its vibrant presence.

References

Fisher, R. and Clarke, N. (2014). Architectural Guide: South Africa. Berlin: DOM Publishers.

Greig, D. (1971). A guide to Architecture in South Africa. Cape Town: Howard Timmins.

Mungroo, M. (2016). Renowned Architect Hans Hallen visits UKZN Residences. In: UKZNABA online vol.4(24), 26 May 2016.

 

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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.