Architecture on My Mind

The corporate office blocks of urban South Africa are all too frequently stylistic borrowings from 'overseas' rather than showpieces of local design, and are often unsuited to South Africa's exacting climates. They clutter city landscapes, making them the dreaded anywhere, somewhere, nowhere u strange and somehow unsympathetic to the human beings that use them. These are some of the views expressed in this brave and significant book, which challenges South Africans to develop new identities and express them in the built environment. The buildings in South African cities scrounged from elsewhere reflect a past that has no relevance for the present. Lipman asks: 'Whose memories do such building stir, whose nostalgias do they gratify, whose cultural roots are being acknowledged?' The answer, Lipman believes, lies in design with people in mind u including people's history and culture and including design for the poor. This he sees as a redeeming feature in South African architecture, but one that is regrettably barely visible. Buildings are not merely images of what is, of how we live at present. Appropriate architecture can and does speak of what might be, of how we might live. For th