Natal innovation - University of Natal, Durban's law center and offices

Architectural Review, The, March, 1995 by Catherine Slessor

Originally founded in 1910, the University of Natal is the largest of the three universities serving KwaZulu-Natal, with a student population of 14 000. There are three main campuses - two in Durban (Howard College and Medical School) and one in Pietermaritzburg. Around half the student body is served by the Howard College Campus, which is strung out along a steep ridge to the west of Durban's city centre. The Innovation Centre is a new initiative for the university, intended to strengthen links between academe and the world outside. The centre provides a physical and educational framework within which the university can serve the community directly through a wide-ranging programme of skills enhancement. The overall development plan for the Innovation Centre includes the provision of teaching facilities, offices, laboratories, light industrial, medical and short term residential accommodation. The initial component of the master plan, a law centre and foundation offices designed by Hallen Custers Smith; was completed at the end of last year.

Extreme topographical conditions mitigated against extending the academic core of the Howard College campus. Existing buildings are perched precariously on a ridge that drops around 40 m on either side. Land for large scale development is limited, so the Innovation Centre is located on a new campus extension on slopes to the west of Howard College. The law centre houses several independent units, including a legal aid clinic, a centre for socio-legal studies, and a school for legal practice. These specialist functions are supplemented by a communal library, lecture theatre and cafeteria, for use by the Innovation Centre as a whole.

The ordering principles of the new building are clearly defined, suggesting links with historical models such as Jefferson's campus at the University of Virginia, La Tourette by Le Corbusier, or local Natal examples such as the nineteenth-century monastery at Marianhill and Hallen Theron & Partners' earlier Mangosuthu Technikon, completed in 1978. The protected courtyard form has a strong organisational logic and creates a realm of inner calm that evokes a monastic cloister or college quadrangle. It also has a long African tradition, embodied by the Zulu kraal. Cellular offices and seminar rooms wrap around the courtyard and major elements are expressed as distinct geometric volumes within the regular framework. Large seminar rooms project out at 45 degree angles from the facade, and the entire composition is held together and formalised by the squat cylinder of the lecture theatre and the cube of the library at opposite ends of the courtyard.

The cylinder, with a cafeteria at lower level, forms a communal node around which successive phases of the Innovation Centre will develop. The two parts of the node, lecture theatre and refectory are counterbalanced in a symbiosis of solid and void. The solid, blind box of the lecture theatre is suspended over the void of the cafeteria below. The cafeteria in turn links through to the foyer of the lecture theatre, with views to and from the courtyard. Responsive manipulation of the section along the length of the new building ensures that the dominant volume of the lecture theatre does not overwhelm the courtyard, which has an almost domestic scale compared with the fortress-like exterior. Since the new centre is set apart from the body of the campus, and is also the first piece in a larger mosaic, the slightly defensive configuration has an underlying logic. Over time, new parts will gradually be added, so although the building currently appears complete and self-contained, it is simultaneously poised to receive future additions.

With its concealed inner court waiting to be discovered within a fortified carapace, the law centre offers two quite distinct spatial experiences. Once the outer rampart has been breached, through the skewed main entrance on the south corner, the inner domain is immediately revealed. The rectangular, colonnaded courtyard is suffused with a surprising translucence through large areas of glazing shaded by deep, overhanging eaves. This articulation of the roof on the courtyard side contrasts with the condition around the imposing exterior walls, where shallow pitches of corrugated metal end abruptly at the edge of the building. To achieve a degree of climate control, windows at lower level are set at 45 degrees within the deep external skin, effectively angled away from sources of glare and heat. At eaves level a continuous cowled overhang fashioned from fibre cement sheet reinforces the quasi-industrial character of the complex. The ascetic palette of rubiginous brick, raw concrete and pre-painted sheet metal refers to materials generally in use throughout the existing campus and establishes a basic constructional vocabulary for future extensions. When a building is obliged to relate to a greater, unbuilt whole, it is often hard to create a satisfying individual entity. Hallen Custers Smith's new law centre nurtures the relationships between its component parts and the bigger picture with humanity and clarity. It must be hoped that both the physical constituents and educational aims of the Innovation Centre are eventually realised.