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...