Haus of machines
This private motorcycle museum in Bryanston, Johannesburg, was designed by Rebel Base Collective so that it could later be transformed into a home.
Professional team
Architect: Rebel Base Collective
Main contractors: Rebel Base Construction
Structural engineers: Hull Engineering
The brief for the BIKE HAUS, as this project was named, was two briefs in one: architects Rebel Base Collective were tasked with designing a museum to house a private collection of vintage motorcycles, displaying them as functional art pieces. At the same time, the design had to future-proof the building so that it could potentially be transformed into a home at some point. For Rebel Base Collective, this meant having to conceptualise two overlapping buildings, making provision for services, yet creating enough space to house the collection.
Viewing the motorcycles as what they call ‘utilitarian art’ inspired the architects to view the building, too, as a kind of functional art. The inspiration they took from the motorcycles themselves was, however, far from literal. While the designs of the motorcycles prompted the integration of shapes and functions into the shape of the building, Rebel Base Collective took the opportunity to explore the essence of the raw building to create a backdrop for the ‘tale of time’ embodied in the motorcycle collection.
As designer-builders on this project, Rebel Base Collective were responsible for the construction of the building as well as its design, so these two elements of its making became indistinguishable in practice. The building is thus painstakingly handmade – designed, engineered and crafted – to challenge the norms of construction and create something unique.
Rebel Base Collective adapted and challenged the simple column-to-slab frame in both subtle and bold ways. The sculptural base of the building is a meticulously detailed concrete frame. Its most dramatic element is a swooping eight-metre-high concrete wall that flanks the entrance. Its double-curved (hyperbolic paraboloid) shape snakes on the ground and is straight at the top.
Its construction involved two full-height concrete pours that took a total of 13 hours to complete. “Instead of conventional downstand beams, we filleted our beams to give us a gentler slab, but also increased the desired spans while reducing our thickness to 170mm and saving about 30% of the concrete we would have used in a conventional system,” explain the architects. “These filleted edges are expressed on the building’s perimeter where they taper down to a 50mm rim.”
Inside, a cantilevered staircase is suspended from the roof and creates dynamic shadows in the light-filled atriums. The building opens to the north to let in light and overlooks a garden with a rim-flow pool. The internal spaces and the relationship between inside and out remain flexible and open to interpretation and reuse, similarly prompted by the purity of the building and the way in which it expresses the methods and techniques of its construction.
The first floor now accommodates an Ayurvedic healthcare practice. Ayurveda, or ancient Indian medicine, has a holistic approach to health and the space was designed to give Ayurveda a modern look and feel, with a focus on natural elements.
For the moment, however, housing this lovingly assembled collection of machines, the beautifully expressed, hands-on nature of the construction both pays homage to the collection and creates an environment that helps articulate its own story.