South Africans, like other post-colonial societies, face the dilemma of how to replace and yet also reproduce the state. The difficulty in finding an answer is reflected in discussions about what to do with old buildings. No matter how much you might want to renovate, replace and modernise, the thought of getting rid of what was solidly made leads to considerable anxiety. What methods, forms and ideas should be used instead? A potential way to surmount this problem is to draw

South Africa’s Department for International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) seems to hide from Pretoria, crouching behind a hill, with its back towards the city. The best views of it are from above on the Meintjieskop*, from where it looks like a fat beetle with a set of angled legs protruding from one side of its body. Some people have described it as a beached whale skeleton, and it certainly is a real Leviathan of a building. My main impression of the O. R. Tambo (DIRCO)

We’ve been trialling a new way to engage people in our research – using a clothes horse, a handful of pegs and some photographs of government buildings printed on cloth. The idea is a bit like an in-depth vox-pop. My colleague Selemo Nkwe and I arrive in a busy city centre, shopping mall or bus station and set up. We unfold our clothes horse and peg on the cloths. People are busy on their lunch-break or shopping, but they stare; some hesitate. We invite them to come and see,

10th - 13th century Nothing remains of the buildings of this iron age city which sat on the meeting of the Shashe and Limpopo Rivers and was the capital of a large kingdom spread across what is now South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. From archaeological remains, it appears that the city was a complex of stone walls separating buildings made of stone and wood. It appears to have been a hierarchical society, with the main political elites living on the Mapungubwe Hill, and les

1891 The Ou Raadsaal, or Old Council Hall, was commissioned by the first president of the Boer Transvaal republic, Paul Kruger, and was designed by the Dutch architect, Sytze Wierda. The Raadsaal was the home of the Volksraad, the republican parliament. Rumour has it that originally the building was to be two storeys high, but that Kruger, on discovering that the neighbouring hotel was to have three, commissioned an additional floor. The building is now used by the Tshwane Mu

1909 - 1913 Designed by Herbert Baker, one of Britain's most famous colonial architects, the Union Building became the seat of South African government after the South African War (1899-1901). Designed to emulate European classicism, Baker wanted his building to represent the 'attributes of the eternal' - stating that it would embody rational, civilised, colonial government. The two wings, joined by a curved lobby, are designed to represent the union of two 'races', Afrikaans

1960 This police station was originally named after John Vorster, Minister of Justice and then Prime Minister, the man who created many of apartheid’s most restrictive security laws. It was designed by South Africa architects, Harris, Fels, Sacks and Janes. Its large bulk, located in the heart of Johannesburg, asserted the segregation of black and white communities and the coercive power of the state. Several political prisoners died in detention here. Its modernist style is

2004 The Constitutional Court is the home for the body which protects South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution. It was designed by South African architects, OMM and Urban Solutions Architects and Urban Designers. The Court occupies the site of the Old Boer Fort and notorious 'Number Four' prison block in the heart of Johannesburg. The building reflects South Africa's brutal past – incorporating elements of the original fort and prison into the structure – and its overcoming

The European Research Council has awarded a consolidator grant to Prof Julia Gallagher for her project, Understanding Statehood through Architecture: a comparative study of Africa’s state buildings. The five-year project sets out to understand how African states work and what they mean to citizens. It does so by looking at state buildings, such as parliaments, ministries, courts, police stations and presidential headquarters in seven African countries – South Africa, Tanzania