Portfolio of Work - Emile Snyman

The Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum forms part of the Nineteenth century recreational park complex of St George’s Park. Built in the Neo-classical style, the buildings are arranged symmetrically at 90 degrees to one another to define the main entrance of the park. At the focal point of their facades lies the Obelisk War Memorial, the site of an annual memorial ceremony held in commemoration of the lives lost in both world wars. The north wing of the art museum was built in 1924, with the south wing following after WII as intended in the original masterplan.  Adjacent to the park lies St George’s cemetery, the oldest in Port Elizabeth. In close proximity to the museum lies South Africa’s oldest rugby and cricket test venue and South Africa’s oldest tennis club. Needless to say the park and its constituent parts, represent an important and invaluable part of the heritage of the city and its people and as such could be said to exist as an heritage precinct.

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Currently there exists complex issues in terms of heritage, urban legibility and accommodation. The collection of the art museum is too great to be accommodated by the current archives, and the gallery display space is of the same situation. The expanding collection requires at least a doubling of gallery space and archival space of at least double of the new the gallery space. Another major problem is the disconnection between the two wings of the art museum, artifacts are transported between the wings in open air conditions through public areas. The high strength winds common to the bay area only serve to exacerbate the problem.

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The approach taken towards heritage for the architectural intervention  is informed by the ICOMOS Burra Charter of 1999;

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• For the adaption to retain the cultural significance of the place with minimal impact.

• For the new work to not distort or obscure the culture significance of the place, or detract from its interpretation and appreciation.

• For the new work to be readily identifiable as such.

 

It was decided to forego the two separate entrances at the facades of the north and south wings’, for a new entrance accessed from within the park. The reasons for this decision was to create greater clarity in the scheme. The vestibules accessed from the original entrances are too small for contemporary needs, the new entrance provided the opportunity to create a more contemporary museum experience;

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• linear and controlled,

• a clear definition of served and service space and

• a hierarchical arrangement of spaces.

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A limited material palette was selected to complement the simplicity of the original neo-classical buildings. Fair-faced concrete, hard-wood timber and glass. Concrete planes create enclosure where required, tilted glass planes emerge from the undergrowth and timber slats help blend the mass of the building into the foliage of the park, ultimately resulting in a restrained and appropriate scheme which compliments the elegance of the original Neo-classical buildings and results in a greater unity of inclusion, or what Venturi terms the ‘difficult whole’.