Anne-apolis

  In several of my previous blogs, I have looked at aspects of Wits University, which has been my home-from-home since 1976 when I was a First Year architecture student. These have included green roofs , the Flower Hall , re-use of buildings , Universal Access , decorative details , and the doors of Hillman Building , where I still have an office. But today I want to step into the past, to explore how the main campus of Wits has evolved, in many ways mimicking the architecturally hybrid city of Johannesburg. The University evolved out of the School of Mines, based in the CBD next to the original railway station, in a stately building that still exists. In its new guise, it moved to the site of the present-day East Campus in Braamfontein, perched on a ridge which is the watershed of the Witwatersrand (water flows to the south into the Orange River and into the Atlantic Ocean, while water on the north flows eventually into the Indian Ocean). The original three buildings formed a dram...

  I can remember so many things my dad taught me, from how to hold a pencil, to fixing a petrol lawnmower, and even how to listen to classical music. The most dramatic of these "lessons" was when I was in my early teens and I had hit a cricket ball through one of the large windows (I was absolutely hopeless at cricket and most other ball games, so this was an accident waiting to happen!) My dad insisted that I should replace the glass, so he set up a deckchair outside and proceeded to instruct me. The first step was to remove all the broken glass. My dad was excellent at thinking beyond the task at hand, and suggested I use some old painting drop-cloths on both the inside of the room and the flowerbed directly outside to catch the glass splinters and chips of paint and putty. This is definitely a job for leather gloves - the tiny splinters of glass can pierce through even quite thick gardening gloves. This gave me an early appreciation for why construction workers prefer to w...

 Sometimes when looking through the photos of listings of homes for sale, I am struck by features that look out-of-place - whether because they give a shabby appearance to an otherwise great room, or because they look dated. If these are bedrooms or living rooms, these features can often be quite economical and cost-effective to remedy, whether for your own comfort or if you are planning to put your home on sale. In these rooms, the culprits are often damaged, faded or dated wall finishes - if painted, a new coat of paint in a tinted white would be my recommendation. While it is quite dramatic and trendy to use bold colours as an accent wall or even for a whole room, these can become limiting on any future plans for the room, and can negatively affect the perceptions of a prospective buyer. A tinted white gives a bit of character and liveliness to the space, rather than pure white, which can be quite sterile and harsh.  Wallpaper can be a bit more of a challenge - if it is sti...