Two hundred ascending steel reeds, silhouetted against the Pretoria skyline — a garden of healing and remembrance.
“the dream” · Interpretive Centre & Pan-African Archive
A museum that holds the whole of South Africa's story — from 3.6 billion years ago to the present — within a single garden of healing and remembrance, set into the boulder landscape of Salvokop above Pretoria.
Dieter Brandt joined as Project Architect in 2006 and saw the museum complex through to completion.
Freedom Park crowns Salvokop hill, in full view of the city. Crowning it in turn is a sculpture of two hundred ascending steel reeds — the Reeds from which humanity emerged in the African creation story, and a sign of the nation's rebirth.
The design pays homage to the rocky landscape and to the spirit of indigenous knowledge systems — placing the country's history in a context of integrity, held nationally and internationally.
The boulder motif relates to the surrounding landscape and provides an enclave for contemplation. Leaning and folding through large volumes and compressed spaces, the building resonates with the mountain shelters of traditional healers and the sites inhabited by the Khoisan.
Form drawn from the rock plates and fissures of the site — the architecture unfolds from the landscape rather than sitting upon it.
Deep-set, irregular openings admit just enough light to hold the dimly-lit, cave-like atmosphere of a mountain shelter.
A skin that ages slowly and will one day turn green, merging the building with the colour of the landscape around it.
The cracks and fissures of the natural boulders testify to rock that has existed and changed over thousands of generations. They are echoed directly in the building's deep-set windows and complex, irregular openings.
Copper volumes rise from a battered brick base — the unfolding of the boulders into an efficient, nuanced setting for a museum.
Copper was chosen because it ages slowly and will eventually go green and merge with the colour of the hill. Its malleability allowed the complex surfaces to be manipulated by hand into the shape of a natural rock — a material significant across Africa, traded for thousands of years.
The exhibition route leans and folds through large volumes and compressed passages, leading to a cave-like feeling inside //hapo — interiors shaped to resonate with the mountain shelters of the Khoisan and the traditional healers who still inhabit them.
The competent fusing of context, programme and symbolism produced a remarkably beautiful, nuanced and complex building. — Award of Excellence citation, SAIA