THE ART[S] EXPERIENCE

Imagine a place where you can enjoy music, film, talks, natural history exhibits, and art. Now stop imagining, Circa on Jellicoe, exists. Its home is Johannesburg, which beats to the pulse of many themes. To drive along its streets is to be continuously exposed to craft born of natural media, under the care of a well trained hand. Artists engage with their patrons through informal pavement "galleries", where despite difficulty, sidewalks fight to sustain their function as public connectors. Within this sometimes challenging socio-economic context of a young democratic South Africa, the design focuses on a comprehensive way of looking at art and in so doing, creates a flexible, multi-purpose building that gives the visitor complete exposure to all types of art within the ambit of a vibrant cultural gathering place. Located on the corner of a highly visible intersection, it marks a prominent public intervention within the existing urban fabric. While Circa may be called a small building, it does not lack attitude. Its purpose is to create a building responsive to the art on show, altering perspectives of everyday life to encourage the gallery goer to reconsider what is defined as “art” and an “art gallery”. It also aims to counter the poor quality of public space prevailing in Johannesburg, by creating an urban public building with ‘good manners’. For this reason, the architecture uses level differences and design elements to provide safety and does not resort to divisional boundary walls. The architecture is therefore a sculptural artwork, moulding itself around the art it contains and spilling over onto the sidewalks surrounding it. It contains exhibition spaces for crafts and mixed media and large meeting places for public events or smaller private functions. The journey between gallery spaces creates an opportunity to enjoy art, architecture and landscape, thereby making the most of our experience of public space and public buildings. Architectural Synopsis The architectural form has grown from the constraints of a narrow site and has resulted in a sculptural landmark. Fins and scrims create visual linkages into and out of the building, while the main gallery remains cocooned from the hustle and bustle. The design is based on an elliptical plan that does not represent an unsurprising constancy, but rather something of more organic origins. It reflects the abstract nature of art, stimulating thoughts from which the building is to be understood. As its name suggests, it is not specific or defined, it is Circa. The main architectural features are anodised aluminium fins that partition inside and outside space forming a second skin; a scrim. Their repetitive placement along the facade creates a monumental sculptural form. As elements, their power lies in the play of light and shadow along the edges of the building. Evolving, with the time of day and seasons, the experience of filtered light in the northern edges of Circa accentuates the sensory discovery of space. Playfully poetic, the fins are equal neither in length nor in colour. The inspiration for this came from nature, with its paradox of implied order and chaos. As with the vertical elegance of reeds and grasses in traditional Zulu Kraals, these elements create enclosure while maintaining views through them. The fire escape is enclosed within a steel structure that is separate to the main building. Covered by wire mesh so that creepers can grow to cover it, this passage forms unique point of observation of the stateliness of the fins and the ellipse. This dialog between handmade product (the facade) and natural growth (the green scrim) aims to evoke an appreciation of the poetic and functional importance of scrims in our cities. Circa comprises three floors. The ground floor is named Speke and consists of about 106m2 of exhibition space for crafts. On crossing the public threshold, users are drawn into the building via a perimeter ramp that connects ground and first floor exhibition spaces and promotes view through the fins into the city beyond. Its double volume first floor, consists of 177.76m2 multi-purpose exhibition space, with 7 movable display screens which can be dropped through the floor into the ground level below, realising the full extent of the multi-purpose floor. The top floor consists of the Darwin Room, an 85m2 private lounge that can be rented out for functions and that spills out onto a 20m2 deck, overlooking Johannesburg. If it is true that buildings are poetic yet rooted in logic, and are crafted though the creative process, then Circa not only responds to the poetic composition of a building within a vibrant urban context, but also to the logic of the needs of the art it houses and of its public. Circa is a building that is built upon a desire to be part of this city, its art and its people; it is a fluid point in time, that will morph and evolve as South Africa, and its art does.