Architecture of Optimism Exhibition

Posted on February 23, 2023

Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for the introduction and the invitation and opportunity to make a few opening remarks on this rare but most welcome travelling exhibition of architecture that occurred between the two World Wars in Kaunas, Lithuania. The project is very much aligned with my teaching and research interests which focus on the transmigration of Modern Movement design approaches in South Africa, but I must admit Kaunas is not a city that has ever crossed my radar. So, the last two days have been a great learning experience.

Exhibitions, while being a record of a particular condition, time or attitude, elicit not only a visual spectacle but draw us into other lesser-known worlds, facilitating the acquisition of new knowledge. Exhibitions often (as in this case) foster cross-cultural and transnational connections, allowing us to speculate about other ways of operating while simultaneously bringing an understanding of our own context into focus. An exhibition in loco is, of course, immediate, direct and contextualised. A travelling one is much more difficult to create and curate. However, that which we see before us, generated so ably by the Lithuanian architect and professor of architecture, Gintaras Balčyti, gives us a glimpse into a time both past and present. For me, the exhibition format elicits an understanding of time through what I assume are original depictions of buildings in black and white in their context, contrasted with current colourful internal views. For me, monochrome photographs limit aesthetic distraction bringing to the fore contrast and detail while highlighting the effect of light, as argued by the arch Modern Movement architect Le Corbusier who once noted that "…Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of volumes brought together in LIGHT". Of course, the lives of Kaunas' inhabitants, an extremely important aspect of the inhabitation of architecture, and its history over time are more difficult to discern.

The main aim of this exhibition in South Africa was to highlight an approach of new nations (states) to design new buildings for new national institutions while imbuing a sense of cultural optimism between world wars. And so, a connection with Pretoria is closely forged as after the 2nd WW; there was a concerted effort by the Nationalist Government here to establish a new identity for the city. Beyond the political intentions, I would argue that it was a regionalist architectural reaction spearheaded, in part, by the architect Gerard Moerdjik, who resisted Imperialist tendencies by arguing for an "Afrikaner (African) architecture". It was, as in Kaunas, a way of merging tradition and modernity. This search for non-colonialist architecture would even call for a rejection of Cape Dutch and Neo-Classicist architecture that saw the advent of an Art Deco influence in the Voortrekker Monument of 1938. As an aside, the city of Springs (about 90 km south of us) boasts the largest number of small-scale Art Deco design buildings in the world and outside of Miami, Florida, USA, built between the world wars. By the mid-1930s, it was one of the six largest towns in South Africa. Far from the exuberance and Africanisation of the Art Deco style in the Voortrekker monument, the stripped-down approach in the Rentbell Towers on Church Square Pretoria closely echoes the architecture of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Trades in Lithuania.

Another commonality of architecture between Kaunas and Pretoria is the similar range of architectural styles in both cities that responded to city and building identity and function. On the one hand this can be seen in the Neoclassicist tendencies of the Kaunas' Bank of Lithuania and the Transvaal Bank on Church Square in Pretoria, almost identical in their architectural representation. Contrastingly the influence of the Bauhaus architecture school (the first of its kind to espouse Modern Movement thinking) seen in the Kaunas Research Laboratory was only felt in Pretoria after the 2nd world war when its transmigration was initiated by visits of local architects to, and publications on Brazilian Modernism. Fortunately, a regional climatic response was introduced in Pretoria that limited the austerity of Bauhaus functionality more present in Lithuania.

But, as I indicated earlier, one should never forget people and their relationship to place and architecture. So, I thought I would cite some cultural connections that existed between South Africa and Lithuania and, more directly, in Pretoria. Evidently, between 1880 and 1910, over 40 000 Lithuanian Jews immigrated to South Africa to avoid persecution. A leading figure was Samuel Marks, an industrialist and financier who was born the son of a Jewish tailor in 1844 in Neustadt, in the Russian Empire. After arriving in Cape Town and a sojourn in Kimberley, he eventually established a number of local industries in Pretoria, including the Hatherley distillery to the east of the city. His private residence near the distillery is now a museum and housed, at its inception, expensive and rare modern plumbing and heating fittings. Hermann Kallenbach (1871–1945) was a Lithuanian-born Jewish architect who was one of the foremost friends and associates of Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian revolutionary, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist. Kaltenbach studied architecture in Stuttgart and Munich and, in 1896, came to South Africa to join his uncles in Johannesburg. Louis Karol, born in Lithuania in 1928, arrived with his parents in South Africa eight years later. He graduated in architecture from the University of Cape Town and, in 1952, immediately opened an extremely successful practice which is still in existence today. A last but non-architectural anecdote is that concerning Louis Washkansky (1912–1967), a Lithuanian Jew who received the world's first human-to-human heart transplant, undertaken by Dr Chris Barnard in Cape Town in 1967.

This exhibition has undoubtedly reinvigorated my passion for maintaining the record of architecture in my own town while re-questioning whether there is enough appreciation of our local heritage and its meaning for the future.

Do enjoy the exhibition, which has involved a lot of work and effort, time and money. Take time to read the wonderful descriptions of the captured buildings, their dates of construction and their stylistic influence.

I also look forward to more of these exhibitions as they inspired me to reveal our architectural material housed in the Architectural Archives, 50m away from where we now stand.

To learn more about the exhibition, please watch the video here

- Author Prof Arthur Barker

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