Freedom Park
Freedom Park
Salvokp, South Africa
Client: Freedom Park Trust
Architects: GAPP Architects/ Urban Designers, MMA Architects, Mashabane Rose
Landscape Architects: Newton Lansdcape Architects, Mashabane Rose
Driven by the necessity for the diverse people of South Africa and the world to understand and appreciate the country’s struggle for liberation, The Freedom Park was born as a national and international icon of humanity and freedom.
The Freedom Park, with its Garden of Remembrance, is located on a 52-hectare site on Salvokop Hill at the entrance into Tshwane (Pretoria) from Johannesburg.
The uphill climbs and winding roads serve a very symbolic purpose at The Freedom Park: it stands as a testimony to the arduous road that South Africans had to travel to reach their destination of humanity and freedom.
Documentation issued by the Freedom Park Trust highlights the significance of high ground, rock, hills and mountains in African culture. “Essentially, the rock is our home… in the mountains African people listened to the voice of silence. Mountains and hills served as a seat of governance for many of the royal kraals. Mountains were considered sacred by some groups who used to go there to pray for rain, or to bury kings in the caves… believing that the ancestors reside there… a step to the heavens and to our humanity.”
The entire site – a natural indigenous garden – constitutes the Garden of Remembrance. It is intended to become “a national symbol for reparation, a symbol of healing, a symbol of cleansing, a place where the spirits of those who lost their lives for freedom can rest.”
The conceptual design for the Garden evolved as an iterative process between the design team – including the landscape architects and architects – and an advisory panel established by Freedom Park Trust. The panel included traditional healers, artists and academics specialising in African culture and indigenous knowledge systems, who provided information and guidance on cultural matters.
The Garden of Remembrance creates the context in which the various elements will be built and anticipates further development in the future, as South Africa’s story unfolds.
The Elements of the Park:
Isivivane:
Situated on the eastern side of the hill is Isivivane – a sanctuary, the resting place for the spirits of those who died in the struggles for humanity and freedom. The concept of Isivivane is derived from the word ‘viva’, which means ‘to come together in a group’.
Sikhumbuto:
This consists of five areas:
Amphitheatre
Gallery of Leaders
Reeds
Sanctuary
Wall of Names
On the crest of Salvokop, subtly blending into the curves of the hill, nestles Sikhumbuto – The Freedom Park’s major memorial element. It stands as a testimony to the various conflicts that have shaped the South Africa of today and commemorates those who have sacrificed their lives for humanity and freedom.
The concept of Sikhumbuto is drawn from siSwati nomenclature and signifies a place of remembrance for those who have died and also a place for invoking their assistance in current and future affairs.
Moshate:
A high-level hospitality suite, which will be used for presidential and diplomatic functions, currently being used as a temporary exhibition space.
Mveledzo:
Mveledzo is a spiral path, which links all the elements of The Freedom Park together. It has been designed in such a way that visitors are taken on a contemplative journey in the serenity of the natural landscape as they walk between Isivivane and Sikhumbuto.
Uitspanplek:
Uitspanplek is a peaceful place where families can spend the day together or where visitors to the Park can relax after a tour. The tranquility of this area, with its panoramic view over the city, makes for an ideal reflective space.
Earmarked for completion in late 2009, two of The Freedom Park’s elements, namely Isivivane and Sikhumbuto, have been opened for public visitation during 2007.
As time goes by, The Park will play a primary role in healing South Africa’s wounds by uniting her diverse people towards reconciliation and nation building.
*Winner: World Architecture Festival Awards 2008 – Nature Category
Freedom Park Museum
Freedom Park Museum
Freedom Park
Salvokp, South Africa
Architect: Obra Architects
Set in a clearing near the Sculpture Garden of the Freedom Park, the Memorial in honor of the victims of apartheid is surrounded by indigenous sugarbush trees at the end of the trajectory of the spiral path. Scheduled to be built in the first phase of construction, the Memorial will anchor the site as a pilgrimage destination, while other buildings undergo continued development. Inspired by the African tradition of carving a grave from within a Baobab trunk as repository for the remains of important community members, the Memorial can be seen as a hollowed-out tree trunk. Its voided interior 30 meters high, 20 meters in diameter and open to the elements through an oculus 5 meters in diameter, it will be more suggestive of a womb than a grave.
The Freedom Park Museum aspires to create an educational experience brought about by a “summoning of the senses.” The everchanging chiaroscuro of light played out on plastered walls of the galleries, the ramps reminding bodies of their own weight as they move through space, and the curved surface of the cavernous interior, subtly invoke a spiritual transcendence only understood with the whole body. The building is configured as four soaring “trunks,” containing ten gallery spaces that can be traversed in sequence as if they were fused into one. Just as trees in close proximity would, with time, grow into one. The museum unfolds as a historical continuum, a spatial journey of the struggle for democracy in apartheid South Africa.
To provide relief from this experience, glazed openings in the wall of the museum mark the ascent with framed views of the city and surrounding countryside below. These relief spaces provide moments of quietude for reflection and contemplation, before the final ascent to the top-level galleries and soaring space of the peace oculi above.
Freedom Park includes the Museum, the Memorial, the Garden of Remembrance with an outdoor gathering space for the celebration of civic festivities, and the Freedom Park Administration buildings. By necessity developed and built collectively over time and inspired by African culture and traditions, the project will strive to transform inevitable symbolic value into an almost pre-linguistic physical presence, slightly irregular and rugged, almost as a rock growing out of the hilltop’s landscape, the product of an alliance between man and nature. Architecture is such only when embodying spiritual essence, it can then help transcend the limitations of our human condition and provide a glimpse of the infinite. The role of architecture is not only that of creating meaningful inhabitation, but also that of telling the story of man’s achievements in a way no other art can. The elements of emancipation against evil in the history of South Africa is such a story, one of universal significance, its dissemination and celebration both necessary and urgent.
The building’s curved exterior walls form a double layered enclosure that serves mechanical, structural and programmatic functions. The cavity space between the walls becomes an artery essential to the life of the building; providing space for air distribution and economical passive heating and cooling systems, emergency egress, and for the storage, installation and maintenance of gallery multi-media equipment and exhibition fixtures. It performs as a sustainable environmental control device, acting as a trombe wall during the winter and as a hot-air exhaust chimney during the summer.
The structure of the Freedom Park Museum has been conceived as a double shell of masonry and concrete. The inner walls of the conical domes are a composite structure of reinforced concrete and infill brick masonry. Radially-arranged narrow concrete fin-columns support concrete slabs and flat concrete beams at floor and ramp levels. These serve to support the inner masonry walls built tight to the concrete fins and slabs. The completed inner structure is ultimately monolithic though it can be constructed sequentially-concrete frame followed by masonry. The outer wall is made of two wythes of brick sandwiching a 10 cm wide lightly reinforced concrete filled cavity. This outer wall is self supporting and tied back to the fins and slabs, thus slender for its height since the core of the inner wall structure provides good buckling and lateral load resistance. The resulting structure is a constructed composite of different orders of structure and material-frame, infill wall and outer shell, concrete and brick-that registers both its own construction and a clear progression of outer lightness to inner core of strength and resilience.
The oculi skylights are proposed as inflated pillows made out of self-cleaning ETFE (ethyltetrofluoroethylene film). This system will allow transparent colorless frameless skylights cleaned by rainfall and immune to air pollution and UV radiation.
