the quality of light and ventilation inside. The residential units will
include a wide range of apartments, from micro-studios to family-
size two-bedroom flats, encouraging not just economic diversity,
but also social diversity. The new residential building will adopt
a similar approach in its unit mix over 11 storeys overlooking the
Johannesburg skyline.
The industrial heritage of the buildings will be honoured not
just through the lightness of the architectural interventions to the
façades and by exposing the expressive minimalism of their industrial
materiality – off-shutter concrete, brickwork and steel – but also
through the naming of each building, which includes refence to
their former incarnations as a centre of the diamond and gold trade,
but reframed as more inclusive and representative of South Africa’s
broader history.
Urban Design
The Jewel City complex will be reintegrated with the existing urban
fabric, but will be orientated inwards to create and sustain a new
pedestrianised section of Fox Street as its central axis. This urban
intervention will help to support a safe, friendly and open pedestrian-
focused public environment and urban infrastructure characterised
by shared public space. All the buildings along the central axis on
either side of Fox Street will include retail pockets to encourage
activity along the spine from east to west.
Project Watch
GASS Architecture Studios has placed major emphasis on the
precinct’s public realm. While they have made pragmatic provision for
vehicle access at key points around the peripheries of the precinct,
where there will be safe parking and drop-off areas for deliveries
and services off the busy main arteries, the precinct will be largely
pedestrianised along its central axis. The quality of the shared public
space will be enhanced with single-level sidewalks, subtly broadening
the walkable space on a level plane. The introduction of lighting, trees
and vegetation, seating and easy wayfinding prompts will further
humanise the streetscape.
The quality of the public space and the broader architectural
character of the precinct is designed not only to catalyse and support
a greater diversity of people within the precinct, but also to invite
and encourage further investment into the CBD. More broadly,
the development opens up the potential for other key nodes of
urban development such as Maboneng, the planned Absa Precinct
and further developments along Fox Street to merge and form an
integrated walkable city.
Sustained by a belief in the transformative potential of urban
design and architecture to catalyse economic and social energy,
dignity and prosperity, GASS Architecture Studios has re-envisioned
this all-but-defunct industrial complex into a series of thoughtful
interventions that breathe new life into Johannesburg’s CBD, while
remining respectful of its heritage.
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