Birthday Publications

This month we published the first two of the twenty-five project features we are planning to celebrate our 25th birthday. The first was KPMG Crescent in Parktown, Johannesburg, South Africa which was completed in 1997. Then we jumped 20 years forward and 50km north-west with the next project in the series, the Stone Garden at Maropeng in the Cradle of Humankind (not to be confused with the Cradle of Human Culture, which, of course, is closer to Cape Town). Join our celebration on Instagram and Facebook. 

 The Stone Garden was also published by Great Gardens of the World this month, along with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital. Great Gardens of the World started off life as Grandi Giardini Italiani but it now features gardens from outside Italy too, old and new. To add to a month of publication excitement, hhlloo published our Botswana Innovation Hub and Freedom Park. Thank-you Great Gardens of the World and hhlloo!

 Perhaps the best thing about the Stone Garden is how it sits in its natural surroundings. Like most of our projects it is associated with a building, but in this case that building is far enough away as to allow the link to become quite tenuous and the garden to feel immersed in wild nature - a vast borrowed landscape. Building in natural landscapes is the topic of an article titled Architecture and Nature published on Archdaily this month, which argues that the way in which architecture relates to the natural landscape reflects how humankind relates to nature at a given time. Can a man-made intervention ever return the favour of the natural landscape, and “enrich” it, to quote from the article? 

 ‘til next time.

The Stone Garden at Maropeng