RED LOCATION – FROM EXCELLENCE TO EXCELLENCE
17 August 2010
RED LOCATION – FROM EXCELLENCE TO EXCELLENCE
The Jo Noero designed architectural model of the Red Location Cultural Precinct is scheduled to be showcased at the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York from 03 October 2010 to 03 January 2011 under the theme: “Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement”.
RED LOCATION CULTURAL PRECINCT, NEW BRIGHTON TOWNSHIP, NELSON MANDELA BAY, SOUTH AFRICA – 13 AUGUST 2010: “Small Scale, Big Change focuses on the process and final product, displaying materials that illustrate the complex and careful development of a design. These outstanding projects—including schools, community centers, housing, and infrastructural interventions—reveal an exciting change in the longstanding dialogue between architecture and its community, wherein the architect’s roles, methods, and responsibilities are dramatically reconsidered. Here, the architect is as much a moderator of social processes as a designer of a structure.”
A giant model of the Red Location Cultural Precinct, as designed by Jo Noero from NoeroWolff Architects will be showcased with seven other South African architectural designs at the World Famous MOMA in New York from October 2010 to January 2011. It is the first time that South African Architecture has received the honours to exhibit at the MOMA.
Jo Noero recently remarked in an interview done with Barbara Hollands: “What is important to stress is that this is not just about doing good things for poor people, but giving poor people world-class architecture too. The Red Location Museum and Precinct will be a blue print for other cities in South Africa and the World because it has shown that socially relevant architecture can be beautiful and uplifting. It will change the Township”.
The City – Nelson Mandela Bay (Metropolitan amalgamation of Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage and Despatch) today proudly and uniquely upholds the name of the globally adored Nelson Mandela. The naming of the City is not by mere coincidence:
In the early 1960’s Nelson Mandela incognito visited Red Location, in Port Elizabeth in order to establish the first underground cell of the military wing of the African National Congress under the name of the “Spear of the Nation” (Umkhonto weSizwe). Mandela also introduced the Mandela Plan (M-Plan) of Street and Area Committees. The plan became implemented and subsequently spread nationally – mobilizing the oppressed masses against the Apartheid Regime from grassroots level...
Since the early 1990’s, and following the South African political unbannings, anti apartheid veterans such as the late Ernest Malgas, expressed a desire to have a Museum of Struggle established in the Red Location area as it was a hotspot of the anti-apartheid Struggle and a place where the paths of many Liberation Cadres crossed frequently…
By December 1998, a Red Location Cultural Precinct designed by the architects Jo Noero and Heinrich Wolff (which included an Apartheid Museum, Creative Art Centre, Art Gallery, Market, Library, Hall and Conference Centre) won the City’s approval and by November 2006 the primary phased Red Location Museum opened its doors to the public.
Numerous top International and Local awards began streaming in, even well before the launch of the Red Location Museum. By December 2005, the Museum scooped the top World Leadership Award for best Architecture and Civil Engineering. More accolades of International esteem followed: By June 2006, the Red Location Museum won the RIBA Lubetiken award for the World’s best architecture and in the same period, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality won the Dedalo Minose Price for commissioning the Red Location Museum project.
What makes the Red Location Cultural Precinct such an outstanding and unique architectural marvel is its placement in the heart of an African Township and the manner in which the narrative of the Struggle history is intertwined with the Precinct’s architectural design and construction elements. For instance, the concrete structures and saw-toothed roofs reflect on the surrounding factories where residents laboured; rustic gigantic memory boxes echoes on the memories of Red Location’s original red rusted dwellings (after which the area was named) in combination with the migrant labourers who lived/moved through the area and who kept memory trinkets of their families and loved ones…
The second phase of the Red Location Cultural Precinct, which comprises of an Art Gallery; one of Africa’s best electronic Libraries and the Metro Archives are nearing completion and should be launched by the beginning of 2011.
With visitor stats at the Red Location Museum at times reaching 15 000 per month – it is predicted that the completed Red Location Cultural Precinct is destined to become one of the top South African Tourist attractions. The Museum’s motto is “a world class museum bridging the past to the future” and amongst other aspires to serve as a catalyst for community development and transformation through its exhibitions, programmes and activities.
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