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Flower Hall: Wits

As a child, I remember going to the annual Rand Show, hosted by the Witwatersrand Agricultural Society, one of the highlights of which was visiting the Flower Hall - a vast space carpeted from wall to wall with flowers. In more recent times, the land on which the Rand Show was housed was taken over by Wits, the University of the Witwatersrand, thereby doubling the area of the main campus, the original lands of which are immediately to the east.
The soaring roofs of the Flower Hall: photo Jennifer Fitchett
Wits has retained several of the original buildings, many of which have been retained largely in their original form, such as Hall 29 (used as a basketball venue and doubling up as a large exam venue) and the Wits Club and Alumni House which used to be the wine tasting venue at the Rand Show. Other buildings have their shell retained, but remodelled interiors, and the most ambitious recycling project was the Science Stadium, which ingeniously reused the stadium seating for the large lecture venues, retaining the form of the stadium in its large central open space. 

The reuse of older buildings is a very environmentally responsible approach, harnessing the embodied energy of the original structure. This is captured in the famous 2007 saying by Carl Elefante: " The greenest building is the one that is already built". The original Rand Show buildings lend themselves to this adaptive reuse, as many of them were simply large envelopes of double or treble volume in height and few, if any, internal partitions.

In the case of the Flower Hall, this adaptive reuse has gone through two phases: when Wits first inherited the building, it was simply used as one vast space as an exam venue. I spent many hours, especially memorable in winter, invigilating exams here - the coldest and draughtiest place imaginable, and not ideal for students' optimal performance. The acoustics were also a challenge: every announcement dissipated in the cavernous space.

Over the past two years, the university embarked on an ambitious project to reconfigure the interior of the building, to improve its functionality and to double the capacity as an exam venue. Apart from a new glazed curtain-wall on the south facade and the enclosing of a new foyer to the north which connects it to the adjacent building, the exterior remains unchanged. The architects of the project were Savage + Dodd. The project has been shortlisted by the World Architectural Festival in the Creative Re-use category for the 2024 awards. 

The alterations have retained the drama of the curved roof form with its south-facing clerestorey lighting by introducing a mezzanine. 
The clerestorey lighting from the mezzanine

All the services are exposed in this upper level, in sympathy with the industrial aesthetic of the original building.

The mezzanine level

The original triple-volume space is still acknowledged in the south foyer with its open staircase serving all the levels. The south facade was originally glazed from floor to roof, a feature that has been retained in the new curtain-walling.
The south foyer

New toilets have been introduced on all floors, a welcome addition as the original building's facilities required going out of the building and round to the lower-ground level - an invigilator's nightmare if several students needed them simultaneously!
The toilets directly off the stairs

This project is a remarkable achievement in blending the needs of the present with the architectural fabric of the past, being both highly functional and acknowledging the spatial quality and aesthetic of the original envelope of the building. It is a worthy candidate for a World Architectural Festival award.

As far as I know, the last time a South African building was recognised in this forum was the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre, which won the overall prize for the world's best building in 2009. This project, by Lerotholi Rich Architects, combined employment creation and environmental sustainability with a dramatic external form and interior spatial quality. I was fortunate to be involved with this project as advisor on employment creation for the innovative stabilised earth tiles that were used for the large vaulted spaces. 
Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre
Creative Commons Licensed: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mapungubwe,_Limpopo,_South_Africa_%2820356293890%29.jpg






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