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Causeway
Post Office Building
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Location
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Harare | |
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Designers
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Fleet Utria | ||
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Date
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1995 | ||
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Original
Client
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PTC, Telecommunications Corporation | ||
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Style
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Post modern | ||
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Discussion
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Local
architects Fleet Utria were commissioned to design an office building
for the national Post and Telecommunications Corporation (PTC) in the
early 1990s. The new building was to house the headquarters of the Post
Office Savings Bank (POSB) division of the PTC, and afford the same postal
facilities of its predecessor. As it turned out a new site was procured
across the street - Central Avenue, which provided ample space for a large
development of this nature.}
The site occupies approximately a quarter of a block (south western), and bounded with a two storey art deco style bank building. At the end of this Jacaranda-tree lined section of road stands Compensation House, a 13 storey testament to modernism from the 1960s. Even further down and across the 4th Street road junction to the north east, the twin government office towers (Mukwati and Kaguvi) pay homage to mid 1970s 'brutalism'. } Completed in 1995, the Causeway Post Office building coupled necessity and ingenious with a sprinkling of duplicity. Fleet Utria, (George Fleet, Victor Utria) came up with a monumental and almost iconic design that would also serve as a flagship head quarters of the state giant. Their concern for physical context and sensitivity to climate spurred them towards a semi-deconstructivism approach to this project. The composition took the form of a 14 storey twin tower office block , contrasted by the horizontality of a two storey banking hall facility. The twin structures seem to borrow a line from Architectona's 42-storey, 'Palace' condominium in Miami. It was that firm's first experiment into the idea of the three-dimensional collage on a large scale - a composition based on the collision of two buildings'. If we follow that analogy, Causeway Building playfully juxtaposes shapes and masses in a manner that ties them well with their surroundings} Ref. |
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