An appropriate architecture for Namibia has to cope with a wide daily temperature range and intense solar radiation. Any functional building has to moderate the effects of daytime heating on the structure and the interior. For many centuries, the indigenous peoples responded appropriately by building a framework of poles sheathed with thick layers of mud and small openings.
Swakopmund’s Hohenzollernhaus (1906) is a good example of the local Jugendstil style.
Fotolia
The official architecture of the German colonial era found a different solution, adapting the building traditions of Germany to the altered demands of climate and building materials. The result was a verandah architecture – essentially a thick-walled core covered with a saddle roof and surrounded by a perimeter of lean-to roofs. The latter would shield the walls from the sun’s rays, thereby retarding the passage of heat to the interior of the core.
German architecture in Lüderitz.
Clare Louise Thomas/Apa Publications
The verandah genre
The verandah genre was promoted by missionaries who had encountered it all over South Africa and applied it to their buildings in Namibia since the early 19th century. The Imperial Directorate of Building Services – primarily under the directorship of Gottlieb Redecker, the first architect born in Namibia – developed verandah architecture based on contemporary classical interpretations. A good example is the modifications made to the Ludwig von Estorff House in Windhoek in 1902.
In colonial Namibia, the verandah came to serve additionally as the equivalent of a foyer or entrance hall, and as a congenial, cool, covered outdoor living space, especially if located on the southern part of the house.
The verandah genre was applied to a wide range and scale of building types, achieving its logical conclusion and monumentality in the Parliament Building in Windhoek, the Tintenpalast (“Ink Palace”) of 1913, essentially a double-storeyed verandah building with classical elements.
The foreign visitor to Namibia will not fail to see the Wilhelmenian influence in many of the colonial buildings. Obvious examples are the Railway Station, Prison and the Hohenzollernhaus in Swakopmund. The moderate climate here perhaps allows the Germanic architecture to blend in with the landscape rather more successfully than elsewhere in the country.
William Sander
The most prolific private architect was Wilhelm Sander, whose legacies are firmly imprinted on contemporary Windhoek; the Gathemann and Genossenschaftshaus in Independence Avenue are perhaps the first you will encounter. It was Sander who, inspired by a disused military post, recycled and remodelled it as a medieval castle, Schwerinburg, thereby setting the course for the “manor house” of Duwisib in the south of the country and two more castles in the capital by and for himself. Woermann House in Swakopmund, by the house architect of the shipping line, Friedrich Höft, is based on the design principles of the Arts and Crafts movement while making sparing use of Art Nouveau motifs.
Also Art Nouveau-inspired is the Windhoek landmark, the Church of Christ, completed in 1910. But the centre for Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) architecture is without doubt Lüderitz, the southern harbour town which developed after 1908 when diamonds were found at Kolmanskop.
Mission and Church Buildings in Namibia
Many of Namibia’s oldest buildings are associated with early Christian missions. The first European-constructed building, a house built by Wesleyan missionaries in Warmbad in 1806, was destroyed six years later by the Nama leader Jager Afrikaner (father of Jonker). Generally regarded to be the oldest standing building in Namibia is the stone house built by the Lutheran missionary Reverend Schmelen at Bethanie in 1814, gutted by fire a few years later, and rebuilt and expanded upon by the Reverend Knudsen in the 1840s. The mission church at Bethanie dates to 1859, and there are also 19th-century churches at Otjimbingwe (1867), Okahandja (1876), Keetmanshoop (1895) and Olukonda (1899). For the most part, these are simple and unadorned stone or whitewashed structures, whose lack of architectural pretensions match the austere conditions under which they were constructed.
The early 20th century saw the construction of more elaborate churches in major centres of colonial settlement. Among the most charming is the small Catholic cathedral erected in Tsumeb in 1913-4, and dedicated to St Barbara (patron saint of miners). Far more imposing are Windhoek’s double-spired neo-Romanic Catholic Cathedral, built between 1904 and 1930, the striking Lutheran Felsenkirche (“Church on the Rocks”) in Lüderitz and its counterpart in Swakopmund, and the Lutheran Christus Church in Windhoek.
The town, in a majestic setting focused on the harbour and Shark Island, has the homes of the magnates located on the Diamantberg, the paradigm of which is the well-preserved Goerke House of 1909.
Indigenous architecture is designed to provide shelter from the intense summer sun.
Clare Louise Thomas/Apa Publications
South Africa and apartheid
After the German era, development was hesitant, hampered by political indecision, prolonged droughts and the depression in the 1930s. Things changed in the 1950s when the priority became the incorporation of Namibia into South Africa, which made available massive development aid. The infrastructure was developed and Windhoek matured into today’s modern city.
But the ideology of apartheid was packaged along with economic assistance. To architects, that meant that they had to design into public buildings separate facilities for each of the two races. Examples are the Main Post Office and the terminal buildings of Windhoek’s two airports.
A major development was the Windhoek Library, Museum and Archives Building, the result of an architectural competition won by Hellmut Stauch, son of the discoverer of the Namibian diamond fields, August Stauch. A proponent of modern architecture as developed in Brazil, the younger Stauch reaffirmed in his buildings the need to adapt design to the Namibian climate.
With rising urban land values came the demand for taller buildings. Stauch’s penchant was the external filigree of louvres to shade the core of the building without impeding daylight – in principle a continuation of the verandah traditions of colonial Namibia. The Carl List Haus of 1964 was the prototype.
Old and modern architecture in Windhoek.
Clare Louise Thomas/Apa Publications
Architecture since Independence
German colonial buildings are being preserved and renovated on a large scale; for example, the Alte Feste, Kaiserkrone, and Orban Schule (Conservatoire). This style of architecture, termed historicist because it drew upon historical prototypes, initiated the idea of conserving old buildings.
The architecture being realised at the dawn of independence in 1990 again drew upon historical sources relating the two periods of the country’s past.
The hipped gable roof composition of the Wernhil Park Shopping Centre and the mansard roof and clock tower of Mutual Platz echo the roofscapes of the Wilhelmenian past. In Lüderitz, similar historical motifs have been revived in recent years.
Namibia’s most important office block is Windhoek’s glass-clad Namibia Diamond Corporation (formerly cdm) Building whose distinctive faceted south façade provides the glare-free conditions required for diamond sorting.
Brave new architecture
Bold architectural responses are being made to the country’s problems. In a landscape as harsh as that of Namibia, the setting defies the normal set of value judgements.
The new buildings complete the urban landscape, perhaps more by similarity than by contrast; nevertheless they add to the totality, its richness and diversity, while the old structures remain relevant to everyday contemporary life throughout Namibia.