UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND, 2018
After many years of neglect, the recently refurbished ‘Rembrandt Gallery’ (built in 1963) at the University of the Witwatersrand, has re-opened as a Post-Graduate Student and Resource Centre for the university’s Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management (CLM)
Through the application of several carefully considered architectural tactics, our objective (in the end) was quite simple: to establish a design response that acknowledges the inventive, courageous and finely-crafted tectonic of the building’s original design (by award-winning architect, Jan van Wijk) and to continue with the serious, but delight-seeking design tradition of this unusual little building. Projects like this demand that we interrogate appropriate intervention methodologies in a society that screams for ‘new’ at every possible opportunity. The most challenging question is always how much (or perhaps more importantly, how little) really should be done.