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Red Location
Cultural centre and museum in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
The Red Location art gallery forms a u-shape around a corrugated roof shack dating from around 1902, that has been integrated into its site plan. (All photos © Iwan Baan)
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In the polished concrete, high-ceilinged spaces of the museum’s interior, giant rusted-steel “Memory Boxes” are designed for the preservation and display of documents from the township, as well as commemorative artefacts contributed by every inhabitant.
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NOERO WOLFF / NOERO ARCHITECTS
Jo Noero founded Noero Architects in Johannesburg in 1984 (called Noero Wolff Architects between 1999 and May 2012). The practice has offices in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, and has been the recipient of local and international awards, including the Lubetkin Prize from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2006, the Ralph Erskine Prize from the Nordic Association of Architects in 1993, and the Gold Medal for Architecture from the South African Institute of Architects in 2010. Noero Architects has designed and built over 200 projects, and their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paolo Biennale, the Singapore Biennale, and the National Gallery of Art in Cape Town.PROJECT: Museum of Struggle and the Red Location Cultural Precinct
LOCATION: New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
PROJECT ARCHITECTS: Noero Wolff Architects
DESIGN PARTNER: Jo Noero
PROJECT TEAM: Jo Noero, Heinrich Wolff, Robert McGiven, Tanzeem Rezak, Avish Mistry, Amit Patel, Ricardo Sa, John Blair
CLIENT: Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality
CONSTRUCTION DATE: 2003 to present
The elongated form of the museum echoes those of the surrounding township.Red Location is a cultural centre and museum in New Brighton, one of the oldest townships on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth. The centre’s name refers to the reddish rust of the corrugated metal roofs of the surrounding township.
The museum, which opened in 2005, commemorates the area’s intense resistance to the apartheid regime. It was extended in 2011 with a library, digital archive and an art gallery, which shows art from the townships as well as a permanent collection of works from the Eastern Cape.
During construction the project provided work and training for local inhabitants, with a third of construction workers recruited from among unskilled labourers in the immediate vicinity. The three completed buildings’ forms and materials – such as the museum’s unplastered brickwork and saw-tooth roof – deliberately correspond to neighbouring industrial buildings, helping integrate them into their surroundings. Currently Red Location has 119,000 visitors annually, benefitting not only the institutions themselves but also local residents’ businesses. Future phases of the project will include two theatres, an arts and crafts school and a music school.
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