Project Title: 

Project Location: Pretoria 

Project Focus Area: Memory Legacy and Identity 

Supervisors: Dr Anika van Aswegen & Johan Swart

Project description: 

The Dutch Reformed Church Burgerspark is a Modernist church constructed in 1969 to serve the inner-city population of the capital of South Africa. The Daan Kesting design is a significant example of Pretoria Regionalism, albeit unknown to the users and wider community. The site is opposite the historical Burgers Park on a street lined with religious and non-profit organizations. It now functions as Doxa Deo Tshwane Central.

 The site suffers under the broader issues of misunderstood Modernism, an increasingly secular society and a decaying inner city heritage fabric. The divide between expert value and user value is significant, causing users to be unaware of their space's architectural value. Therefore, most of the interiors have been insensitively altered. The precinct is underutilized and stands aloof from its community and surroundings.

This design sets out to achieve an integration between the alienating culture of inner-city life and the innermost purpose of a modernist church’s soul character, the spiritual experience. The integration is established through four stages of elevation from busy street to church’s innermost sanctuary of healing. Heritage becomes revival. The climactic point of transformation from inner-city confusion to spiritual transcendence occurs around the modernist church’s main feature of enlightenment, its magnificent dalle le verre window display with the theme ‘From Darkness to Light.’  For the progression from street to sanctuary, first an atrium (public), then a narthex (semi-public) and finally the church interior (private) is entered – essentially extending Burgers Park and the street into the precinct. The outside structures will serve as invitation into the various urban programmes of the church, ensuring longevity and adaptability. At street level, an event space will connect the street to the building, accommodating markets, functions, live music, a public green space and an outdoor classroom/meeting area. An educational childcare centre will operate in the consistory block of the church. The main church space, with adaptable floor plan and gallery spaces, will function as an auditorium and a library with flexible workspaces.

The design follows a heritage strategy of attachment and insertion, while implementing the existing honest materiality in a re-envisioned, contemporary manner. Timber slat walls outside create a perforated boundary, opening the church up to the city. The materials found in the existing design diffuse outward from the interior, reintroduced in modern ways. Adaptable furniture allows agency of the spaces.

The theoretical constitution of the project is underlied by the basic theoretical question: “How can interior architecture be used to expand the meaning of Modernist churches by interpreting an adaptive reuse strategy to create an inclusive, community-building environment that stimulates inner city revival?” The project emphasizes the importance of understanding conservation vs. preservation - the theory of managing change.

As a relatively young heritage class, Modernist buildings and the conservation thereof are still being explored. This project aimed to serve as a precedent in aligning expert value of Modernist architecture with the general public disregard for them by transforming the structure into a vessel for community building.