Tom Quoin : Design
How would you like a well-chilled beer, early on a summer’s evening, while you’re perched more than 40m above the Midrand highveld? The stunning view will carry you from the restless Jo’burg skyline to the south through to the rows of craggy kopjes that cradle Pretoria. But you’ll need to strain those tired eyes to catch Keetmanshoop to the west and then, eastward, Maputo on the way to Madagascar.
And, if there’s money weighing down your pockets, you’ll soon be able to sit back in an airy roof-top restaurant. Good, reasonably priced food will, I was told, be at hand.
All this from the sky-way heights of a rugged reinforced-concrete water tower that is reported – if such information grabs you – to be the largest in the world. It’s a massive, intricately designed, tough-to- build structure. The tapering post-stressed ring-like sections rise from a base 4m in diameter in a shallow pool to their full stretch of 30m above. It holds 6,8 mega- litres (other towers carry 0,6) in the now- familiar conical shape, the most efficient for storing high-level water.
This stocky giant supplies the surrounding area with water at pressure. It is, in turn, fed at ground level from a nearby reservoir.
At present, the tower – with its hovering, asymmetric cap-shaped restaurant area – stands alone, on silent guard in a scarred patch of veld, dumped earth and newly made roads.
It has not yet been tamed, humanised. That will come when the two steel-framed structures are built; one a fire-escape, the other a lattice box for two lifts and a stairway. Each, standing some 5m from the upper drum, will be linked to the main structure by a walkway. Soaring, light, open and filled with human movement, they will be foils to the secretive, impassive quiet of the tower.
In my mind’s eye, I see a powerful symbol for urban Gauteng; a mighty container of life-essential water in an often parched province; one that, as we are repeatedly warned, is again threatened by El Nio.
The concrete tower is a forceful human achievement waiting to be softened. That will be done by the people who use the two vertical steel cages, the high-level observation gallery and the crowning restaurant. I see us clambering, excited and curious, over those difficult-to- imagine 6,8 mega-litres, making them understandable by walking, sitting, talking, laughing – by being on top of them.
This is positive collaboration in the world of construction; a building contractor, the architects and engineers combining to produce something first-rate.
If the local bid for a relocated Parliament comes good, together these concrete and steel towers will substitute for the over- shadowed domes and church spires of the past. They will mark a major civic space in the planned reach – from Halfway House to Grand Central Airport – of the Midrand to come.
They will help people to identify from afar a significant place in the usually poorly defined urban settings of South Africa; they will help pull another sprawling smudge into a recognisable shape.