Halfway house - psychiatric rehabilitation center in Parktown, Johannesburg, South Africa

Architectural Review, The, March, 1995 by Catherine Slessor

Through a highly poetic synthesis of form and context, this extension to a psychiatric rehabilitation centre is an inspiring example of architecture's therapeutic power.

First established in 1892, Parktown was originally a garden suburb for Johannesburg's rapidly emerging patrician classes. Perched on a north-facing ridge, symbolically elevated above the scrum of nineteenth-century industrialisation on the southern veld it was, like numerous colonial outposts, a curious adaptation of London's Bedford Park with handsome houses and great swathes of rus in urbe. Parktown was where the proconsuls of Empire lived and Herbert Baker built extensively within its apparently idyllic confines. Yet as Clive Chipkin notes 'Bedford Park was a brave attempt at social advancement; Parktown was essentially atavistic and feudatory, a step backwards in time'.(*)

Walberton Manor, a typical Edwardian Parktown villa, was built in 1908. The original manor house was progressively added to over the years, evolving into a small hotel, with an L-shaped annexe enclosing a central courtyard. Around 10 years ago, the building was acquired by the Talisman Foundation, a private welfare organisation providing residential and day care services for people suffering from mental illness. The Foundation aims to bridge the gap between illness and re-integration into the community. The existing accommodation was successfully adapted for use as a psycho-social rehabilitation centre, but eventually more space was needed and Jo Noero Architects were commissioned to design an extension. The programme included six individual apartments - intended to encourage the skills required for independent living - together with workshops and offices for the centre's therapists and nursing staff.

The new three-storey block is a mirror image of the existing L-shaped extension. It encloses an enlarged central courtyard which has a pleasant, quad-like scale and forms a defining street edge to the south. The two wings of the L-shaped plan are hinged around a circulation core and entrance lobby. The upper storeys are divided into well proportioned flats, with offices, therapy rooms and workshops at ground level. Although the scale and materials of the new building clearly take their cues from the existing architectural language, Noero is determined not to mimic the past through pathological contextualism. In this as in other projects, his capacity to reinterpret existing forms and create a marvellously potent and poetic functionalism is much in evidence. The resulting buildings are free of cultural associations but respond in a very direct way to site, climate and context. Here, an exposed concrete frame is infilled with brick, glazing and metal, a modest essay in tectonic precision. The structure is legibly and simply expressed, reinforcing Noero's conviction that in revealing how buildings are made, through the nature of construction, support and assembly, architecture becomes demystified and more accessible. This quiet understatement of building technology is, unlike High-Tech fetishism, intended to equip people with an understanding that helps them to engage with buildings beyond the abstract level.

The large windows on the courtyard elevation are protected by delicate semi-circular sunscreens made of rippling corrugated metal. The lower storey is rendered a Barraganesque blood red, an appropriate choice, since Johannesburg's scorching highveld has much in common with Mexico's altitudinous intensity. The windows are deliberately generous - sunlight has a beneficially therapeutic effect on the residents and being able to see out helps calm fears of claustrophobia. While not excluding the outside world to the point of being monastic, the courtyard form nurtures a tranquil, inner realm, striking an appropriate balance between the building's public and private dimensions. Both literally and metaphorically, it is a halfway house - but it is also a beautifully realised example of architecture's therapeutic potential.

* Johannesburg Style: Architecture & Society 1880s - 1960s, p32, Clive M Chipkin, David Philip, Cape Town 1993.