Joburg Art Deco

Last night at eleven o'clock I was wandering around Johannesburg's notorious CBD - Central Business District - on foot - an area that most of Joburg's northern suburban population would never dream of entering even in broad daylight (and some areas of which even the police don't go into at night). I felt perfectly safe, though - partly because I was in a group of about eighty people, partly because we had security guards escorting us, and partly because the city centre was absolutely deserted - we saw perhaps half a dozen other pedestrians, a handful of cars (the drivers slowing down to take a look at us) and a couple of rubbish trucks.

The occasion was a workshop for architects that I'm slightly involved in - the French Institute organised a bus tour of the CBD for the workshop participants and any interested members of the public; it was then decided that getting on and off the buses was too complicated, so we ended up taking a ninety-minute walking tour. I've driven through the CBD a number of times during rush hour, which in itself is quite an experience - the roads are snarling gridlock and there are people everywhere - so the night-time tour was an astonishing contrast - I was able to walk down the middle of a major four-lane artery without a vehicle in sight, just a long panorama of traffic lights quietly changing colour to themselves in both directions (and no cars parked in the streets, either - cars are generally not left outside overnight in Joburg...)

We saw a lot of wonderful buildings, some sadly derelict and fenced off behind sheets of corrugated metal, others very well maintained with neat golf-course lawns in front of them (vandalism seems to be nearly unknown here; even tagging, that bane of European cities, is pretty rare). I learned that Johannesburg has the third highest number of Art Deco buildings in the world (after, I think, New York and Miami) - although these buildings are "derivative", mere adaptations of American and European models rather than original - but they still look amazing. All the more extraordinary that most people don't know they're there (I'd never heard anyone talking about CBD architecture before and it's not mentioned in any tourist guide that I've seen) and most people probably wouldn't risk getting out of their cars to take a proper look at them even if they knew. I thoroughly recommend checking them out late at night, just take along a group of 79 friends if you can.

I forgot to take my camera, so to get an idea of what I'm talking about check here to see Lucille Davie's photos (mouse over the thumbnails to see the images). My pathetic mobile phone image is above, over a few Google findings.