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Following Hal Levin's recent post on the passive office building in
Zimbabwe I asked Herb Wade, currently in country on PV work, to check it
out. I though his attached report might be of interest.
Joe King
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Date: Mon, 3 Mar 1997 09:00:22 -0500
From: "Herbert A.`Wade" <herbwade@compuserve.com>
Subject: Eastgate building in Harare
To: "Joseph E. King" <jeking@idir.net>
Message-ID: <199703030900_MC2-1202-F46C@compuserve.com>
Joe,
The description of the building is quite accurate. It DOES look like a copy
of a Lego product grown gargantuan. It may be an energy masterpiece, but I
sure do not like it from a shopper's point of view. No problem on the
ground floor, but to reach offices upstairs, you have blocks that can only
be reached from a certain starting point down stairs. So if someone gives
you an address in that building, you have little chance of finding it
without going up and down two or three times to the access that reaches
that office. Only the second floor has a walkway that spans all the
accesses. For the rest, (and there are 4) you must know in advance which
one to use or else it is trial and error (there is no building directory).
Also, the elevators all start on the 2nd floor! So you have to enter at the
first floor, climb stairs to the next floor then take the right elevator
(there are also 4). I can see absolutely no reason for that except that it
saves a few square meters of floor space on the ground floor.
The designer has a good eye, it looks pretty good, but I think he should be
forced to have his office on the fifth floor in the middle section and see
how he likes it (indeed, I think all engineers and architects should have
to personally live with their creations for a period ot time, maybe the
designs would be a little more responsive to human needs).
Sure, I will take photos and a video too. It is indeed an interesting
building. I am not going to recommend it to my friends as a place for their
offices, though.
Harare is a nice city of about 750,000. I am generally impressed with the
place and am glad to be working here though there are some overtones of the
African sickness (corruption and graft) but not at all on the scale of
Nigeria or Zaire.
Best,
Herb
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