Publications
Partners
From a transportable retail building for footwear brand Puma, to homes, pavilions and even an extreme sports park in China, LOT-EK architecture and design is always redefining the way we use shipping containers in architecture.
Many readers might be familiar with their recent project in Maboneng. The New York-based architects, led by principals Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, created what is probably the biggest residential building in South Africa to be built using shipping containers.
Named Drivelines after the auto dealership that used to occupy the triangular-shaped plot on Albertina Sisulu Road on which the property stands, the seven-storey building forms part of the Maboneng precinct.
“The most interesting thing about Maboneng is that it has an impact beyond its pure, physical shape,” said urban designer Alice Cabaret in a Design Indaba interview earlier this year.
“For example, it has contributed to shifting negative perceptions about Johannesburg, at both a local and an international level. At the same time, it has helped to open a very needed debate in academic and social circles about urban transformation in complex contexts like Johannesburg.”
LOT-EK’s Tolla explained during a recent Skype call that she and Lignano had been coming to Joburg for years and it was exciting when property developer, Jonathan Liebmann (of Maboneng developers Propertuity) approached them to work on Drivelines.
She explains that, having grown up in Naples in Italy, a place which, like Joburg, is marred by violence, and with low-income residents in the city having to make do with what they have, they had always been drawn to Joburg because of its honesty.
“The idea of a city becomes more powerful when a city is honest.”
She says Joburg is honest in the sense that the ugly parts of the city are not hidden from you; you can move from the green lushness of the suburbs and come off the highway into the Joburg CBD where you’re met by less greenery and buildings in disrepair.
It was in thinking about this that they decided that Drivelines needed to be more like a billboard announcing that you were entering Maboneng.
The shipping containers have mostly been left in their original colour on the outside, with big triangular windows cut into the structures.
All the units in the building are studio apartments of different sizes. The floors and outer walls are insulated for thermal changes and, when closed, the windows are sp thick that you barely hear the traffic noise coming from outside.
Tolla says that while they were designing Drivelines, they took into consideration that Maboneng was a dynamic and growing area, and wanted the building to be a super contemporary way of being in the city.
For Tolla and her team at LOT-EK, the shipping container itself is an incredible object as it is easy to find, built to be moved, light and strong.
Tolla says they wanted to design Drivelines so that the building would be as sustainable as possible.
For example, the triangular shapes cut out for the windows were used to reinforce walls as well as to make a little sculpture for the courtyard area.
For Tolla, shipping containers allow for creativity as they can be elevated into amazing structures.
The issue becomes the importance of removing the stigma attached to their use, especially in a place like South Africa where millions of people live in shacks and consider moving into a brick house to be a step upwards.
So, while the complex conversation around gentrification rages on, Maboneng, like other gentrified parts of South Africa, continues to grow and Drivelines is an ambitious way of trying to use architecture to create more low-cost units in an area where people below a certain wage level often feel financially excluded from the rental market.
This article first appeared on designindaba.com
