Current Work with Wolff Architects

Calling in from their Cape Town studio, Ilze Wolff and Heinrich Wolff, founders of Wolff Architects, described how their work subverts Apartheid-era power structures and invites occupant-led change over time. “Buildings are more like meals than monuments,” said Heinrich, in urging designers to embrace the inevitable modification of their work by owners and users. The key is to create “a differential of more changeable and more permanent parts,” as seen in Wolff Architects’ recent projects: a cultural center, a school, a puppeteers’ workshop, a hospital, and a start-up office suspended over a market hall, among others. If the Farnsworth House were in South Africa, he added, “It would be sold for scrap” because its design “privileges appearance over inhabitation.” The lecture, co-presented by The Architectural League and The Cooper Union, concluded with a beautifully layered soundscape representing a squatter-occupied Brutalist ruin—originally a community center designed by Uytenbogaardt & Rozendal in the hamlet of Steinkopf—which Ilze called “the ultimate freespace.”