Tracy Murinik
Whether you’ve been aware of it or not, if you’ve been living in South Africa within the past four decades or so, and if you’ve experienced any of this country’s major cities (and even some smaller towns), then it is likely that you have at some point encountered Revel Fox. Or his vision of space and experiential design anyway. If you’ve sauntered along the Durban beachfront, bargained your way languorously through Green Market Square and St. George’s Mall, ogled the BP Centre in Cape Town, or been mugged in Bank City in Johannesburg’s city centre – that’s Revel!
Fox was invited last year by the Department of Architecture at the University of the Free State to present the Sophia Gray Memorial Lecture and an exhibition for his “contribution to the evolution of South African architecture”. This illuminating overview of examples of Fox’s work, spanning his extensive career, is currently showing at the South African National Gallery (SANG).
Much has been written and spoken about Fox’s contribution, over these more than 50 years, to the architecture and urban design planning in South Africa. In certain respects, retrospective exhibitions such as these make me a little anxious because they seem to imply completion or resolution: looking back at the end of a career. And in many ways, my interest lies precisely in the idea that this person of enormously useful skill, experience and expertise is still producing.
Describing himself as a “fairly reluctant politician”, Fox has nevertheless agreed, within a number of civic spheres, to consult and advise on the conception of design and developmental processes around one of the most severe crises facing the country at present, that of structural development and planning.
Fox gained a reputation, over the years, of taking on projects concerned with social upliftment. He has been responsible for a number of realised and/ or proposed housing and education schemes in areas severely lacking resources. He has also be known to refuse a number of projects offered to him, on ideological grounds; his decision not to submit a design for the Cape Technikon on District Six was only one example.
Strong philosophical ideals impressed upon him early on in his career, with the experience of Swedish social development programmes, still feature in a vision of what he hopes South Africa can still achieve. He recognises the urgent need for carefully considered, sophisticated conceptual and design solutions to develop an appropriate and substantial architecture which is sound, functional and economically viable.
This, to me, is a rather encouraging thought. Among other things, Fox serves as the chair of the Housing Committee for the National Housing Research Institute.
He is also a city councillor to Cape Town and serves on the Urban Planning Committee, as well as the Integrated Development Planning (IDP) task force. He is a member of the council of the University of Cape Town and on the National Parks Committee, involved with the development of the Table Mountain Reserve.
This is not to rehash a very abbreviated version of Fox’s profoundly impressive CV, but rather to reflect – if one does look back on such a career – on how such a person could offer a moment of promise and optimism considering the largely cynical prospects of managing to successfully redress historical neglect.
Fox does comment, however, that his role is as advisor, and that it is ultimately not him who gets to make final civic decisions. He notes, with concern, that in the city’s desperate rush to build and develop new housing schemes, there tends to be a lack of consideration to accommodate and consider a need for community, and that evidence of inspired design solutions and planning of programmes are seldom encountered.
Part of this schism, he suggests, has to do with the fact that the planning department operates independently of the housing department. His role in the IDP has aimed, partly, to describe a more holistic vision of the needs of such projects to encompass social, economic and structural levels of design and planning.
Revel Fox: Reflections on the Making of Space is on at the SA National Gallery