Architects:Office 24-7 Architecture

Area:2220 m²

Year:2015

Photographs:Natasha Dawjee Laurent

Lead Architect:Nabeel Essa

Exhibition Contractor:Image K, Digital Fabric

Electrical Engineers:CKR Consulting Engineers

Architects: William Dewar, Beth Stevens, Letlhabile Shubane

Landscape Architect: Patrick Watson

Exhibition Design: Brainwave

General Contractor : BriDev Projects, Thoma Thabiso Construction

City: Moruleng

Country: South Africa

The rural town of Moruleng is found along the slopes of the Mmammitlwa Mountains in the Northwest province of South Africa. It is the ancestral home of the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela people. Through a conceptual spatial layering of histories, the precinct forces a complete rethink of the notion of the cultural museum. Numerous historical influences on the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela community are at play in this space, from pre-colonial stone settlements and systems, to how Christianity and apartheid have affected this rural community, and also a future rich with possibility. The precinct talks to issues of localized identity in a global framework, as you move between age-old beliefs and traditions and present-day realities.

The brief for the project was to renovate the existing museum, restore the adjacent historic Dutch Reformed Mission Church, and develop a cultural precinct. The layering of new and heritage architectural structures and landscapes as palimpsest is an integral part of the spatial, exhibition, and narrative experience. Throughout the precinct, a deliberate effort has been made to enable visitors to distinguish between historic renovations, pre-colonial reconstructions, and the new elements on the site. The raked amphitheater kgotla has been carved into the landscape with a latticed pergola structure providing shading. The pergola design is a contemporary reinterpretation of the lekgapo patterning traditionally used on floors and walls, using lathes and steel. When the sun is overhead, beautiful shadows of these traditional patterns are cast on the ground.

Landscaping was used to establish a unifying framework and to enforce and enhance new relationships between the heritage buildings on the site. Our intention was to look at the history through a broad lens, and as such the landscaping overlays and reconfigures the ground by utilizing traditional stone walls, reconstructing the pattern of a nearby Iron Age Tswana settlement.

Visitors pass the stonewalled structures and through the landscaped terrain to the restored Dutch Reformed Mission Church, built in 1889. In 2009, the church was a virtual ruin. It was an empty shell with crumbling brickwork, broken church pews, missing doors and windows, and a thick covering of bird and animal droppings. Yet the potential was clear. The slow but rewarding process of restoration was undertaken, with every small detail carefully thought through. All we had to go on were two historical photos from the late 1930s and early 1960s. We had to extrapolate from these what the character of the original building would have been. We left much of the original brick unplastered, juxtaposed against new insertions. A new ramp was constructed to deal with level changes and accessibility. It was made of dark brick to reflect that it is a contemporary insertion, and shadow detail was used to separate it from the original structure. Today the church functions as a multifunctional exhibition and event space.