Kyle Soobramoney

The city of Johannesburg has undergone massive transformations since its conception and the discovery of gold that set the city on an exponentially rising trajectory. Through the aftermaths of apartheid, many post-industrial buildings are scattered through the city landscape, forgotten, and decaying with accompanying detrimental effects to their surrounding context.

One such building is the three castles cigarette factory located in the inner city. The building has a long history from the 1900s as a tobacco manufacturer, shortly after the brand advocated consumption of tobacco for women which was a big part of their marketing campaign during a pivotal period of the women’s movement during the 1920s, thereafter it was a women’s garment and lingerie factory which employed women and were owned by women. In its last surviving years, it was a gay night club called the dungeon.

This investigation aims to readapt a delipidating heritage building like the three castles to grow industry and economy through the ever-growing textile and secondhand clothing industry that might possibly help working class women and female entrepreneurs have a stronger foothold in the city through this industry, as industrial labor, and basic jobs in this category for women are scarce. Methodologies such as adaptive re-use and symbiotic architecture are aimed to be implemented to endorse an architecture that is feasible for abandoned heritage buildings. Architecture that is intended to be easy to assemble, move, grow and change based on the needs of the user while preserving the identity of the building and at the same time redefining it. The aim is to create a mixed use closed loop selfsustaining building that programmatically focuses on the education and economic components of the context.