Cape Town's history also preserved in modern architecture

The effects of the emergence of the 2010 World Cup Stadium in the landscape of Cape Town have yet to be fully understood over time. Already in its immediate presence, through its modern approach to architecture, its massive concreteness, and set in the city against the iconic backdrop of Table Mountain, it has become the dominant global image of post-apartheid Cape Town.

As is well known from the debates around its possible proposed locations in the city a few years ago, this image has been carefully constructed to present a particular view of Cape Town to an international market of 2010 tourists.

What is less immediately accessible from this image is the underlying presence in the city of earlier forms of modern architecture built during the years of apartheid. Many of these buildings are less easily transformed into tourist attractions in the post-apartheid city than the slick, technologically advanced modernism of the stadium, and yet their presence continues to affect the daily lives of people across Cape Town.

The effects of modern architecture and urban planning in Cape Town are now well-known and have a darker, more problematic and divisive history in the making of the apartheid character of the city. At the same time certain examples of Cape Town's modernist architecture have long been considered by local architects as exemplary works of an international architectural design standard. With the passage of time since 1994, certain modernist buildings are being considered for their heritage worthiness.

There are two striking instances of this in contemporary Cape Town. The first is in Lwandle near Somerset West, where Hostel 33 is being restored as part of the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum. It is the only remaining migrant labour hostel designed by engineers in the local authorities as part of a compound for single males who worked in the Helderberg Basin and is a reminder of the oppressive policies of apartheid's migrant labour practices under the infamous Coloured Labour Preference legislation.

The second is the proposed redevelopment of the Werdmuller Centre in Claremont designed by the University of Cape Town's Professor Roelof Uytenbogaardt in the 1970s. Since it was built this shopping centre has been controversial. Built in amongst the largely Victorian architecture of old Claremont after forced removals in the area, its modern architecture was hailed with affection in the 1970s by architects, but less favourably received by the broader public.

In both instances the buildings fall outside of the cautionary 60-year clause contained in the National Heritage Resources Act promulgated in 1999, and arguments have had to be presented to the heritage authorities motivating for their heritage worthiness. What these two projects reveal is the complexity of the histories of their presence in the landscape of the city.

While their shared categorisation as works of modernist architecture is technically correct, as both Hostel 33 and the Werdmuller Centre were designed in accordance with internationally accepted principles of modernist design, albeit in different ways, their emergence in the local context and within the politics of the time in Cape Town are strikingly different. Hostel 33 was designed as part of a planned hermetically sealed off labour compound which later became a township space; the Werdmuller Centre was an individual building commissioned in the 1970s as a shopping centre in a newly formed White Group Area. In both cases the buildings were designed for racially designated Population Groups.

The argument for the preservation of Hostel 33 in its original state is for the retention of space that memorialises a key spatial type manifest as part of the apartheid lexicon of segregation. Here the highly administered lives and traumatic conditions under which black men had to live in urban areas under the Pass Laws is remembered through the old hostel, which is located in amongst the other hostels that were transformed into family accommodation under a "Hostels to Homes" project in the late 1990s.

In the walking tour at the Lwandle Museum, Cape Town's first and only township museum, the hostel is part of a narrative of township life which has its origins in the establishment of inferior racialised spaces in the apartheid city.

The arguments presented for the retention of the Werdmuller Centre are less obvious. Its status as a building held in high regard by architects has been highlighted by the heritage authorities on whose advice architects have become the "affected parties" in terms of heritage legislation and public process. For architects its status is as an exceptional example of Corbusian modernism.

Other arguments that have been made are around the claim that this was a building designed according to "timeless", "democratic" principles, an ideal of a building that was intended to somehow transcend the racialised shopping areas connecting and serving shopping commuters walking from Claremont Station to the Main Road.

As it stands today, the Werdmuller Centre is a run down, dangerous and abandoned space in a landscape of signature buildings along Claremont's much altered Main Road, and a commercial failure. Many architects blame the owners, Old Mutual, for this decay, for not understanding the building's idealistically conceived design intentions. Yet it seems clear the owner's commission was for a far less idealistic building that would serve Cape Town's elite white shoppers whose negative response to the building was published widely.

Many of the motivations presented in the defence of the building's demolition also acknowledge the building's functional shortcomings. As such, the question of Werdmuller Centre's future has presented a conundrum for both heritage practice and development. Its democratic intentions (if indeed these can really be considered as such) are not realised in the present and the affection for the building by architects has not yet been reconsidered in relation to its history of strong negative public sentiment.

Paying attention to the arguments presented in these two cases reveals sets of interests at play in the post-apartheid city. There is the continuity with the past in the marginal space of the township, where access to housing remains a major issue and the hostel is viewed as a reminder and symbol of the lived experience of apartheid in this context. Here memorialisation is precisely because of the desire to remember the abject living conditions under the migrant labour system.

By contrast, in Claremont the motivations for the preservation of the centre are motivated by a concerned group of architects' desire to conserve a building, through remembering its ideas, despite its wider rejection.

But of course the contests over Werdmuller's future are all about its value as prime private property. The wishes of those who would like to see the Werdmuller Centre remain standing are motivated by affection for the building's architect and for its "timeless" design, despite its failure as a functional building.

Whatever the long-term future of the Cape Town Stadium will be, it will most probably be read in terms of the debates that have emerged over these other sites. There is no doubt that its location along the elite Atlantic Seaboard will continue to be the subject of criticism, perceived as a lost opportunity to provide sporting facilities close to the communities displaced by apartheid and forced removals. Yet, at the same time, its presence will also most probably be naturalised and celebrated in the high modernist landscape of Mouille Point and Green Point which it abuts.