ELEVATED ANGLES

When the Johannesburg General Hospital and its adjoining medical school complex opened in 1979 and 1983 respectively, the spaces were fraught with apartheid-era segregation and racially discriminatory practices. Both the hospital and medical school are brutalist concrete structures, their cold forms symbolic of their alienating nature. After all, the hospital only opened to all races in 1990 and, in 2008, it was renamed in honour of activist Charlotte Maxeke.

Today, the University of Witwatersrand Faculty of Health Sciences and the Medical School face growing student numbers and the need for more teaching space. However, the Faculty and Medical School, attached to and located south of the Johannesburg Academic Hospital, are situated on a tight site where there is little space for growth. Office 24-7 Architecture, founded by Nabeel Essa, led the project for the new Teaching and Resource Centre that offers teaching and study spaces for large numbers of undergraduate students. This included new construction as well as additions to existing buildings. It also entailed the renovation of two existing spaces in the Phantom Heads and Prosthodontics Laboratories, housing the largest and most up-to-date oral health simulation facility in the country.

Lighter forms

The rooftop addition needed to be lightweight — not an easy requirement to fulfil. Yet this constraint brought opportunities to create a distinct architectural language and explore lightweight construction that regulates heat and insulates sound. As a result, the building was assembled as an entirely steel frame structure (composed of steel sheeting, insulation, and dry wall), with negligible use of concrete and brickwork. The structure offers openness, fluidity, and ephemerality against the hard, heavy, and dark spaces of the 1979 apartheid buildings.

The glazed concourse, naturally lit through a clerestory strip window, celebrates light in an environment where interior spaces were previously dimly lit. The atrium evokes this sense of lightness induced by the building’s new form too: sitting on a bulky existing concrete structure, the L-shaped atrium aligns with the balcony, sharing the same views and social connectivity brought by visual connections and layering. The porosity of the new additions shows the transformed attitude to educational spaces that welcomes, rather than alienates.

Flexible (re)configuration

The stairs are not only entry points to the new building — they’re conduits between the open courtyard and the balcony, creating multiple fluid connections to the existing building and open-air green space. Designed with a sculptural quality and fine steel detailing, the staircase allows generous movement and invites social encounters through its built-in seating. The exterior fire-escape staircases are celebrated and integrated with everyday circulation.

Rethinking traditional principles of quiet study, the project emphasises group study and inter-student exchange as fundamental to learning. The classrooms have stackable dividing walls, allowing for multiple configurations: four extra-large classrooms open into one large exam venue, a core requirement for the university. While these arrangements are more formal, they’re complemented by the large, open concourse providing generous spaces for a relaxed study area and social interaction.

Integrating functions

In their future-forward architectural move, Office 24-7 Architecture centres sustainability: the north-facing roof houses solar panels and is designed to harvest rainwater, which is used to flush the toilets and water the garden. Where the campus previously lacked open, green space, the new building defines, enhances, and extends the small, rectangular patch of outdoor recreation space. The new structure’s steep, angled roof positions this open space as an entry threshold and courtyard: its angled edges frame the area as a sheltered oasis. Shaped and raised, the structure houses an open-air study and leisure space. From the concourse and cantilevered balconies, students now have 180-degree views of Johannesburg’s impressive city skyline.