The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront is one of the great South African adaptive reuse case studies. Below is an in depth article on the work conducted during the first phase of this landmark project (completed 1990/1). The piece appeared in the 1992 edition of Restorica, the journal of the Simon van der Stel Foundation (today the Heritage Association of South Africa). Thank you to the University of Pretoria (copyright holders) for giving us permission to publish.
The establishment of the historic link between the City of Cape Town and the sea is regarded as a key factor in securing the viability of the city in environmental and cultural terms. The restoration of these historic linkages, the retention of the working harbour, the rehabilitation of individual buildings at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (V&AW) and the accommodation of adaptive uses are all regarded as conservation activities in the broader sense and thus worthy of the 1991 Cape Times Centenary Medal for conservation and building rehabilitation.
The Waterfront has also received the Cape Institute of Architects conservation award for the Pierhead & Portswood Precincts while the number of declared national monuments at the Waterfront has risen from three to eighteen.
The V&AW project provides the forum for organised planning action to restore the physical and cultural ties between city and harbour and the means for a variety of development agencies and professional disciplines to operate towards a widely based common goal.
This symbiotic relationship between shared cultural values and goals and the physical framework established...
