SOUTH AFRICA'S MASTERS IN CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE part 3

DHK GROUP – and it’s six Executive Directors, namely Derick Henstra (Executive Chairman), Paul Krynauw, Peter Fehrsen, Anette Potgieter, Renske Haller and Peter Stokes.

This group is responsible for several high-profile projects in Italy and South Africa; as well as numerous projects throughout Africa, in countries including Mauritius, the Seychelles, Tanzania, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.

PORTSIDE CAPE TOWN

“dhk Group has been responsible for several high-profile projects that have had a considerable impact within their urban contexts – and precisely because of their sensitivity to the sites on which they have been built. When Cape Town’s former Dutch reformed Church Synod Hall was partially demolished, the city might have forever lost a significant part of its architectural history: yet that imposing building’s ‘memory has been preserved’ in the 15 on Orange Hotel that takes its place and in which key elements of the original structure were retained.

15 on ORANGE HOTEL

For Derick, conservation is ‘very important’. Yet the buildings in question ‘have to work – we can’t just make museums; if you can’t find a function for an old building, it must make way for a new one’. In the case of conversions such as Mandela Rhodes Place and the Taj Cape Town hotel a melding of two historically important bank buildings with a third contemporary structure – the firm ‘has taken the old fabric of the city and given it a new lease on life’. Source: House and Leisure Magazine

TAJ CAPE TOWN HOTEL