Biography
Founded by directors Heinrich Wolff and Ilze Wolff, Wolff Architects is an architecture practice driven by a philosophical concern with consequence – one that extends beyond the design of buildings to include research, filmmaking, creative publication and public interventions. These expanded forms of practice allow Wolff to explore architecture not only as a physical construct, but also as a social, historical, and imaginative process. This concern is embedded across the practice’s varied outputs, including architectural and urban design, advocacy for spatial justice, heritage consultancy, research, curatorial work, and experimental forms of representation and engagement. The practice currently consistsof 10 individuals who contribute diverse skills and experience to Wolff’s collective production.
Wolff is committed to fostering an intellectually rigorous and educational working environment, supported by architects, a film editor and creative producer, interns, andsupport staff.
Both directors have taught widely at institutions including the University of Cape Town, IUA Venice, ETH Zurich, the University of Goa, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Wolff’s work ranges from large-scale urban design and consultancy for cities such as Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, and Pretoria, to schools and public buildings in areas historically marginalised by apartheid planning, as well as critically acclaimed private projects. Grounded in Cape Town as a site of knowledge and contestation, the practice consistently advocates for a more connected, inclusive, and socially responsive public realm.
Synopsis
LUMUMBA / AFTER THE FIRE
A site-responsive multimedia installation and discursive intervention.
In April 2021, the fire on Table Mountain entered the University of Cape Town and irreversibly transformed the Jagger Reading Room: one of South Africa’s most significant spaces of study, memory and public knowledge. The fifth anniversary commemoration, Opportunity in Loss, has already begun to frame the site as a space through which new futures may be imagined. Our proposal takes as its artistic point of departure Lumumba: Death of a Prophet by Raoul Peck, an essay film on the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister and one of the foundational martyrs of Pan-African liberation. We initially understood the film to have been among the only surviving media after the fire. We now understand that other materials also survived, and therefore no longer present the film as the sole surviving work. For us, this fact still remains a potent entry point into a broader consideration of what survives, what is remembered, and what kinds of knowledge a library might carry into the future.