ANGLO AMERICAN CAMPUS
Location: Johannesburg
Program: Corporate offices
Client: Anglo American
Status: Competition Entry, 3rd prize winner
Team: In association with Jakupa Architects & Urban Designers
This project was a two-stage competition to modernise the Johannesburg campus of mining corporation Anglo American. Our winning concept draws a direct connection between the company's geological heritage and the built environment, expressed through two organising ideas — the 'Urban Carpet' and the 'Crystal Boxes.' The urban carpet is a continuous animated ground plane that weaves through the campus, connecting urban foyers, event plazas, and public gardens into a single, flowing public realm that brings the landscape into the heart of the city block.
Rising from this active ground level, glazed crystal boxes are strategically inserted into and above the existing buildings, creating luminous semi-public spaces that glow against the Johannesburg skyline at night. A bold new glazed podium anchors the street edge, giving Anglo American a confident and transparent civic presence — one that reflects the company's ambition to be as connected to its community as it is to the land.
Crystal boxes is a concept that deals with the internal vertical floors. New extensions on the roofs of buildings form light boxes, and floating social hubs and conference rooms inside the buildings are made of glass to evoke the quartz and rich minerals trapped in rocks.
Urban carpet deals with the horizontal ground plane, conceived as a social landscape, undulating and full of greenery. It stretches into each building and into open public spaces, unifying the whole campus and merging with the city’s urban fabric beyond the campus boundary.
