Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library/
Adjaye Associates
Project Details
Location(City/Country):
Johannesburg / South AfricaTipology:
Educational UnbuiltYear (Design/Construction):
2020 / -Area (Net/Gross):
- / 5.400 m2Operational Carbon emissions (B6) kgCO2e/m2/y:
0Embodied Carbon emissions (A1-A3) kgCO2e/m2:
0- Use of locally sourced compressed mud for the rammed earth facades.
- Locally sourced stone and wood will be used for terrace flooring and interior cladding.
- Part of the electricity needs will be generated by photovoltaic solar panels located on the rooftop of the building.
Project description as provided by the architects.
Located in Johannesburg, the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library is a space of excellence, learning, research, discourse and cultural exchange predicated on the African perspective. The new Library will feature a multiplicity of functions including a museum, temporary exhibition space, research center and special collections, auditorium, women’s empowerment center, reading room, shop, cafeteria, digital experience space, seminar rooms, office space and an archive center. The archive center will act as a repository for the papers, artifacts and key documents of President Mbeki and other significant African historical figures. Providing infrastructure for the preservation and distribution of African history and knowledge, the Library will become a new anchorpoint and campus for local and international scholars.
Conceptually, the new building makes visible the invisible knowledge of ancient and contemporary African history through both form and program. Sited in Riviera, Johannesburg, the Library will harbour the knowledge of the land whilst acting as a space for connection in which the advancement of an African Renaissance becomes the premise of the structure. Represented in design as a metaphor for knowledge based nourishment, the new building references the structures of granaries — which allow for the extension of grain production and the systematization of cycles of feeding, planting and harvesting.
Using architecture as a tool to reimagine storage and sustenance into form, the granary stores guide the overall building concept. The eight cylindrical granary-styled forms are made contemporary through the topping of domes with apertures that take into consideration the solar orientation of light within. The internal infrastructure of these chambers see to it that the building accommodates a multiplicity of programmatic functions. They are connected through an ‘indoor den’ — a horizontal interstitial space that extends the length of the entire building to provide a new public space in service to the community.
Use of the locally sourced compressed mud in the form of a rammed earth facade, terrazzo flooring made from local stone and timber cladding from local wood species collectively reduce the overall carbon footprint of the structure. Through a site-specific understanding of the subtropical highland climate of Johannesburg, solar harvesting is utilized through state of the art photo-voltaic solar panels, located on the rooftop absorbing sunlight and generating electricity.
The architecture of the Thabo Mbeki Presidential Library brings together continental African thought and form as a powerful means of tapping into collective memory. This memory, embedded within the intelligence of the African consciousness, now sees a typology of learning and a typology of sustenance materialize into form.
Client: Thabo Mbeki Foundation
Project Architect: Adjaye Associates
Local Architect: MMA Design Studios
Link to the project on the architect website: https//www.adjaye.com/work/thabo-mbeki-presidential-library