If you’re familiar with the Cape Town CBD, then chances are you’ll know the tall building at 1 Thibault Square, which has just become the CCID’s home. Our communications manager, Carola Koblitz, takes a walk through the building’s past and into the new offices on the (lucky) 13th floor.
Designed by the late, renowned South African architect Revel Fox (of Revel Fox & Partners, still in business today), and completed in 1972 after three years of construction, it’s the type of building that many of us Capetonians recognise but, depending on age, we all seem to have our own term of reference for it. The BP Tower. The LG Building. The one with the Standard Bank sign at the top.
Originally christened the BP Centre, and incorporating the low-lying buildings that still surround and link to it on Thibault Square, the tower block was my very first official office environment when, during the late 1970s, I spent the afternoons of my student days in it as a part-time receptionist to a quantity surveyor. Back then, there were few other buildings tall enough to block our view of the harbour and I can even remember watching the Union-Castle Royal Mail ship undertaking its final voyage out of Table Bay harbour.
Being back in the building, there’s a wonderful sense for me of now returning to my roots; coming full circle, so to speak. Much the same as the building has itself.
Until last year, when Portside opened on Bree Street, it was the tallest building in the Central City. In 1973, it won a medal as the best example of architecture in the Cape Province. In 2000, the South African Institute of Architecture conducted a national survey to identify “good buildings” and the BP Centre was among those selected.
Built for R8 million by (then) Murray & Stewart, the tower sits at a jaunty 45 degree twist to the rectangular grid of the streets surrounding it; the intention not only to bring addition focus onto the building itself but to place it practically on a north-south axis, which minimises the sun load on the facades and consequently reduces air conditioning running costs.
The twist also enables all offices to have a view of either the harbour or across the CBD towards the mountain, and gives occupants a unique outlook between the neighbouring buildings rather than directly at them. It’s a major bonus for the CCID staff: every one of us now has a superb view of our downtown!
To shield the windows on the east, north and west from the sun, a precast screen was mounted on every floor of the 32-storey office tower. These screens stand away from the sides of the building to allow air to flow behind them and reflect additional light into the offices, while cutting off the sun’s direct rays. The facade consists of precast column and beam liners with an exposed aggregate grey stone – a finish unlikely to suffer the same discolouration that downtown buildings often encounter through city pollution.
The dramatic three-storey foyer (bringing the building to 35 storeys in total) was an innovation in itself, contained within a large circular frameless glass drum suspended from a steel ring attached to the underside of the structure. The low-rise building adjacent to the tower, now the offices of Standard Bank Thibault Square branch, originally contained a private cinema, exhibition and conference rooms, and additional offices for use by BP, the building’s original anchor tenant.
In 2006, the building was sold along with two other office buildings in Cape Town for R300m, and was at the time the largest grade-A commercial property in the city. Today owned and managed by Redefine, the building received an extensive upgrade of R25m from its previous owners in 2011, and with the CBD now expanding significantly into the Foreshore area, 1 Thibault is well placed in what is fast becoming the new heart of the CBD. It’s a fitting new home for the CCID, and one to which I’ve fondly returned.
This article first appeared in the April/May 2015 issue of City Views.