NO. 7 ESSELEN STREET

Moving into a new work space presents a unique opportunity for organisations to implement and promote a positive workplace culture and to spatially and aesthetically capture their brand and ethos. This can have a huge impact on how the organisation works, enhancing morale, productivity and collaboration.

The Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (WRHI), is a leading African research institute focusing on sexual and reproductive health, HIV and vaccine preventable diseases. Our task was to consolidate the RHI’s existing office, research and training spaces, housed in various venues in Johannesburg, into an existing eleven-storey building in the heart of the Hillbrow Health Precinct. This included space allocation for over six hundred staff as well as visitors and patients. The RHI’s corporate identity was translated into a spatial and material strategy that works with the existing features of the modernist building originally designed by architect Herbert Prins for the Wits Medical School. The RHI’s corporate identity consists of a palette of calm blues and white to which we introduced mustard and gold colours, rooting the RHI’s Johannesburg branch to its location in the City of Gold.

26’10 project team: Thorsten Deckler, Paul Devenish, Shani Fakir, Carla Gaum, Flint Shongwe