Ponte City Apartments
Encyclopedia
Ponte City is a skyscraper
in the Hillbrow neighbourhood of Johannesburg
, South Africa
. It was built in 1975 to a height of 173 m (567.6 ft), making it the tallest residential
skyscraper in Africa. The 54-story building is cylindrical, with an open center allowing additional light into the apartments. The center space is known as "the core" and rises above an uneven rock floor. Ponte City was an extremely desirable address for its views over all of Johannesburg and its surroundings. The sign on top of the building is the largest sign in the southern hemisphere. It currently advertises the South African mobile phone
company Vodacom
.
s moved into the building and it became extremely unsafe. Ponte City became symbolic of the crime and urban decay gripping the once cosmopolitan Hillbrow neighborhood. The core filled with debris five stories high as the owners left the building to decay. There were even proposals in the mid-1990s to turn the building into a highrise prison
. In 2001 Trafalgar Properties took over management of the building and began making some much needed changes to the building.
In May 2007 Ponte changed ownership and a re-development project New Ponte was put in motion. David Selvan and Nour Addine Ayyoub under Ayyoub's company, Investagain, planned to totally revitalize the building. The planned development would have contained 467 residential units, retail and leisure-time areas. Over the next few years, the Johannesburg Development Agency planned to invest about R900-million in the areas around Ponte City such as the Ellis Park Precinct project, as well as an upgrade of Hillbrow and Berea partly in preparation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup
.
The sub-prime crisis caused the banks not to provide the funding required to finish the revitalisation, the project was cancelled and ownership was given back to the Kempston group. The building is currently owned and operated by the Kempston group.
Skyscraper
A skyscraper is a tall, continuously habitable building of many stories, often designed for office and commercial use. There is no official definition or height above which a building may be classified as a skyscraper...
in the Hillbrow neighbourhood of Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
. It was built in 1975 to a height of 173 m (567.6 ft), making it the tallest residential
House
A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...
skyscraper in Africa. The 54-story building is cylindrical, with an open center allowing additional light into the apartments. The center space is known as "the core" and rises above an uneven rock floor. Ponte City was an extremely desirable address for its views over all of Johannesburg and its surroundings. The sign on top of the building is the largest sign in the southern hemisphere. It currently advertises the South African mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
company Vodacom
Vodacom
Vodacom is a pan-African mobile telecommunications company, and was the 1st cellular network in South Africa. It provides GSM service to more than 35 million customers in South Africa, Tanzania, Lesotho, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Revenue for the year ended 31 March 2008...
.
History
The principal designer of Ponte was Mannie Feldman, working in a team together with Manfred Hermer and Rodney Grosskopf. Rodney Grosskopff recalled the decision to make the building circular, the first cylindrical skyscraper in Africa. At the time, Johannesburg bylaws required kitchens and bathrooms to have a window, so Grosskopff designed the building with a hollow interior, allowing light to enter the apartments from both sides. At the bottom of the immense building were retail stores and initial plans were to include an indoor ski slope on the 32000 square feet (2,972.9 m²) inner core floor. The building was so tall because developers wanted a large number of units but only had limited land to build on. The building was located 35 minutes from the Jan Smuts International Airport (now called OR Tambo International Airport) and almost within walking distance of the innercity with theatres like the Market and the Civic within 5 km (3.1 mi).Decay
During the late 80s gang activity had caused the crime rate to soar at the tower and the surrounding neighbourhood. By the 1990s, after the end of apartheid, many gangGang
A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...
s moved into the building and it became extremely unsafe. Ponte City became symbolic of the crime and urban decay gripping the once cosmopolitan Hillbrow neighborhood. The core filled with debris five stories high as the owners left the building to decay. There were even proposals in the mid-1990s to turn the building into a highrise prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
. In 2001 Trafalgar Properties took over management of the building and began making some much needed changes to the building.
New Ponte
2010 FIFA World Cup
The 2010 FIFA World Cup was the 19th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It took place in South Africa from 11 June to 11 July 2010...
.
The sub-prime crisis caused the banks not to provide the funding required to finish the revitalisation, the project was cancelled and ownership was given back to the Kempston group. The building is currently owned and operated by the Kempston group.
Movies
- In February 2007 director Danny BoyleDanny BoyleDaniel "Danny" Boyle is an English filmmaker and producer. He is best known for his work on films such as Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours, 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Trainspotting. For Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle won numerous awards in 2008, including the Academy Award for Best Director...
(TrainspottingTrainspotting (film)Trainspotting is a 1996 British satirical/drama film directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh. The movie follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life...
, 28 Days Later28 Days Later28 Days Later is an acclaimed 2002 British horror film directed by Danny Boyle. The screenplay was written by Alex Garland, and the film stars Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, and Christopher Eccleston...
, and Slumdog MillionaireSlumdog MillionaireSlumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British epic romantic drama adventure film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q & A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup...
) announced his intention to film a thriller set in the tower. - One of the final shots of the 2009 film District 9District 9District 9 is a 2009 South African science fiction thriller film directed by Neill Blomkamp. It was written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, and produced by Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham. The film stars Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, and David James...
is of the tower.
Books
- German writer Norman Ohler used the Ponte as the setting for his book Stadt des Goldes, "Ponte sums up all the hope, all the wrong ideas of modernism, all the decay, all the craziness of the city. It is a symbolic building, a sort of white whale, it is concrete fear, the tower of Babel, and yet it is strangely beautiful".