Architect Ilze Wolff on architecture as activism
Architect Ilze Wolff has a knack for turning setbacks into opportunities. Take these two instances:
The first happened while she was still a student of architecture at UCT (University of Cape Town). She wanted to study a particular building in Cape Town’s Salt River, but her lecturers didn’t think the building was significant enough. In fact, when she first prepared her research outline to study the Rex Trueform building, her lecturers in the architectural department failed the proposal.
Rex Trueform sits at the corner of Queenspark Avenue and Victoria Road, and it used to be a clothing factory that employed mostly people of colour during apartheid, including some of Ilze’s relatives.