It is argued that in the 21st century it will not be China or America that rule the globe. It will be leading cities that grab the world’s attention and attract investment and knowledge, concentrating economic and political power in the hands of local leadership. More than 50% of the world’s population has already moved to cities and this is to rise to 80% by the middle of the century.
In this growing mêlée between cities vying for centre stage, Cape Town, like many other secondary and tertiary cities, has to make its mark boldly and loudly in order to facilitate and diversify its economic development.
The stunningly successful World Cup has now raised our profile and people’s expectations of what we have to offer and we must keep up that momentum. One way is to continue to host massive global events. Rio de Janeiro is doing this by hosting the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016
Another way is to develop iconic, eye-popping architecture and urban spaces to catch the world’s attention. Again, this is what Rio did when it erected the ten-storey high Statue of Christ on top of Corcovado in 1931. The statue was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007, the only one constructed in the last century.
Like Rio, Cape Town is an attractive city with great natural beauty, but it lacks a complementary language of attractive contemporary architecture. There are enough spaces to accommodate at least several iconic nodes in the city and there is no better time than now to start talking about iconic architecture in Cape Town, especially considering our bid to become World Design Capital in 2014, not to mention our crying need for new and more varied tourist attractions in the city.
Architects and city development pundits talk about the “Bilbao effect”. The previously dormant industrial town of Bilbao in Spain contracted world famous architect Frank Gehry to design a new Guggenheim museum. Almost overnight this gleaming monument, with its titanium twists and curves and soaring glass atrium, turned Bilbao into a sensation and one of the most popular destinations in Europe.
The museum not only utterly transformed the city’s image, but it helped turn it into a hub of design and creativity and became a source of immense civic pride. In its first five years the Bilbao museum generated more than a billion US dollars for the Basque Country, more than ten times its cost, and an additional $190 million in tax revenue.
Buildings can do that, especially buildings conceived as art, as opposed to buildings simply to house art. Nevertheless, iconic buildings are almost always the subject of heated debate. . Their costs cannot be justified by the entry fees they generate (just think of our own stadium), only by their hard-to-measure impact on the broader economy.
By their very nature, they confront attitudes to aesthetics, making a massive statement that seems to contest their surroundings and transforming the skyline so radically that it shakes, people out of their comfort zones. By definition, iconic buildings should inspire awe, disbelief, shock, amazement and finally pride.
We can consider examples like Paris’s Eiffel Tower or London’s “Gherkin”. The Eiffel Tower, which was to be removed at the end of the 1889 World’s Fair, is today the most visited paid monument in the world, with around 6 million visitors ascending it every year. It has become the defining image of both Paris and France and has paid for itself thousands of times over; a feat which dull architecture is simply unable to achieve.
An argument often heard in Cape Town is that we can’t compare ourselves with the likes of New York, Chicago or other modern cities, because our natural beauty is iconic in itself and iconic architecture would detract from it. There is also the sense that overtly modern architecture would detract from our historical significance.
Both arguments are nonsense.
Rio de Janeiro, despite similar socio-economic conditions to Cape Town, was recently voted the world’s most beautiful city. Nevertheless, through talented architects like Oscar Niemayer, they have a public space infrastructure and architecture that puts Cape Town to shame. These buildings have not destroyed nature; they often derive their iconic power from being in dialogue with nature.
Many of the globe’s ancient cities such as Rome, London, Milan and Beijing, understand that they can have both old and new buildings of quality and daring standing side by side. Structures like the London Eye or the Sydney Opera House or the Golden Gate Bridge stand out, but compliment their natural and historical surroundings, adding to the allure of the place.
Visual impact is and always will be a defining characteristic of an icon. Iconic architecture should be eminently photogenic and thought provoking. Its setting is critical. Sydney Opera House and Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers use water as a key theme. Others, like Paris’s La Defense, use grand pedestrian avenues to heighten the sense of approach and discovery. Cape Town has the ability to support iconic architecture that offers not only water and great approach shots, but also a dramatic backdrop. One can imagine the helicopter photos, taking in bold new aspects, including the beautiful Cape Town Stadium, and enhancing the attraction of the Waterfront and Signal Hill through to Table Mountain.
Iconic works should ideally be meaningful and productive, particularly in our context. To be iconic does not mean to lack function. Iconic buildings must be accessible hives of activity. The problem with our stadium is that it is woefully underutilised due to a poverty of understanding around how modern cities use infrastructure to lower operational costs and provide constant socio-cultural amenity. Compare that to Barcelona’s Camp Nou, Europe’s biggest stadium and the home of FC Barcelona, which is open to the public every day for tours, shopping, eating and drinking. Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium gets it and so should we.
Speaking of Barcelona, Gaudi’s weird and wonderful buildings have become its internationally renowned hallmark. The Sagrada Familia church, under construction since 1882, must be the most visited construction site on earth, attracting over 2 million visitors a year. Looking at the church and Gaudi’s other apparitions, one wonders how the city’s planning authorities in the 1800s could have been open-minded and visionary enough to pass such bizarre looking works. One cannot imagine the authorities in the Cape Town of today enabling this.
And there we have our problem. We are too conservative in Cape Town. We hold ourselves back, almost as if to make sure that Sir Herbert Baker is never surpassed. This conservatism should not be celebrated. It hinders innovation, freezing our city in a time warp and conveying a fear of tomorrow. The frontier cities of today will reap the benefits of tomorrow. We need our past but it must not rob us of our future.
It’s possibly because of some of the eyesores that went up in the sixties and seventies that we want to stick with what we’ve got; afraid of daring anything. This is a pity. Our city has more than its fair share of monstrosities, often driven by crass apartheid inspired modernism, but we must give ourselves the chance to correct the urbane ugliness of our post World War II architecture.
We must make a covenant with ourselves that Cape Town will be the most beautiful and public-friendly city within ten years, through its architecture, not in spite of it. The best and the brightest must clamour to be part of this great city and enhance our intellectual capital, innovation and entrepreneurial flair. Cities that cannot attract young business and thought leaders stagnate and become nostalgic and unimaginative and quite simply are left behind.
A city is a living place. In today’s world it must grow and change and, as already mentioned, be bold to be noticed. Otherwise it will be forgotten as the world’s attention moves elsewhere.
Paris’s Pompidou Centre, built in 1972, is a good example of an old, but unashamedly ‘funky,’ building attracting renewed international attention since its renovation in 1997.
There are several buildings in Cape Town that can be given a new life and status as global icon. These include the desperately underutilised Good Hope Centre and City Hall. Given a makeover, they can join the Castle, the currently empty District Six and the new “The Fringe” east city design district to completely uplift a rather tatty area.
We also have a strong case for building something brand new and very bold. Cape Town missed a golden opportunity to design an earth-shaking game changer in the CTICC. Although it is elegant and exceptionally rational, awe-inspiring does not come to mind. Our city is saturated with bland retail, hospitality and offices. Where are the contemporary, awe-inspiring museums, theatres or science centres that support our claim that we are the most creative city in Africa?
We are already amongst the world’s most recognisable cities, but bold, iconic architecture will demonstrate that nature is not our aesthetic crutch and that we are a city of excellence and ingenuity.
Something bold, beautiful and enduring would attract recognition, create civic pride and position us among the most media-friendly, tourism-magnet cities in the world.
Cape Town, it’s time to put on our dancing shoes. Let’s develop some ground-breaking iconic architecture that will serve as a legacy for future generations and push us forwards in the quest to become an intense and vibrant global city.
Author notes:
Guy Lundy is the CEO of Accelerate Cape Town.
Mokena Makeka is a leading architect and urban practitioner.
