Lightness and learning

Khanyisa, a new multi-disciplinary space at St Mary’s School, Waverley, in Johannesburg, designed by Rebel Base Collective, is a porous, pod-like nexus that reshapes how students and staff navigate, inhabit and understand their environment.

PHOTOGRAPHY: David Southwood

Rebel Base Collective designed a new building for St Mary’s School, Waverley, to replace the Pitt Block, an existing building constructed in 1989 and named after Dorothea Pitt, headmistress of St Mary’s from 1973 to 1988.

The school had outgrown the original classrooms and needed additional space and updated facilities. While the Pitt Block commemorated a much-loved and visionary school leader known for her wit, wisdom, compassion and courage, the building itself held no significant architectural or historical value. However, its position at a key point where the junior and senior school campuses meet – and its high visibility from the parking and drop-off area – made it a prominent entry point to the school and a rich opportunity to reimagine the gateway to the campus.

For the school, the decision to make a substantial addition to the campus represented a bold investment in education, particularly girls’ education, and signalled a strong commitment to the future of women in South Africa.

The Brief

The brief called for a shared multi-disciplinary space or flexible educational hub for both the Junior and Senior Schools, representing a continuum of learning between the two sections while encouraging interaction between girls of different ages. It was to have a particular focus on the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) curriculum, which combines these disciplines in a practical, creative and innovative pedagogical approach.

Beyond its programme, the building was to embody the school’s values and provide a foundation for its ethos to flourish. It was conceived as a forward-looking addition that would carry forward the school’s heritage and traditions – one of Johannesburg’s oldest schools (which has occupied this site on the Waverley campus since 1934).

As a threshold or gateway to the campus, the building needed to make a strong architectural statement, offering a welcoming but secure entry from the parking area and helping to orientate visitors. As a point of convergence, it had to facilitate integration and continuity while introducing a new spatial experience.

Design Approach

The axial lines of the senior and junior school campuses intersect at an awkward oblique angle, ruling out a straightforward symmetrical linear solution. This condition, combined with the site’s prominence as an entrance point, led to the concept of the building as a nexus rather than a standalone architectural object early in the design process.

Rather than simplify or rationalise the tangle of converging pathways, Rebel Base Collective embraced the challenge itself as the foundational principle of their design. Thus, the form of the building was conceived not as an object to be approached or arrived at, but as a space to be moved through.

The key pedestrian pathways remain open, though formalised, dividing the site into four quadrants or ‘pods’. Curved walls soften the site’s angular geometry, enhancing circulation and opening up sight lines and spatial cues. Instead of overdetermining movement, the design preserves the informal logic of student movement – the meandering routes, shortcuts, secret paths, and spontaneous navigation that shape daily life.

This openness enabled a design that treats outdoor and in-between spaces as active educational environments. Courtyards and nodes in and around the classrooms become teaching and learning spaces, reflecting the school’s dynamic approach to education. Deep swooping overhangs moderate heat and light while creating sheltered, inhabitable thresholds between inside and out, balancing traditional classroom space with flexible areas for informal use. The architecture invites students and teachers to inhabit the building on their own terms, finding moments of solitude, gathering spaces, and unexpected places to connect.

A translucent barrel volume housing a spiral staircase marks the most prominent entry point from the visitor’s parking, functioning as both beacon and orientation device. It exemplifies the architects’ belief that a building can be both functional and symbolic.

Sustainability

The building takes a thoughtful and integrated approach to sustainability, balancing the use of robust, durable materials with environmental responsiveness. By integrating indoor and outdoor space and prioritising movement, the design achieves a generous sense of scale with less bulk. Simply put, more space is achieved with less building.

Passive design principles were central. Orientation, natural lighting and shading, and ventilation were carefully considered. A constructed wetland system at the heart of the complex provides evaporative cooling, drawing breezes through the site and into classrooms, enhancing interior comfort. The naturalistic, indigenous planting palette invites birds, insects, lizards, frogs and more into the grounds, encouraging appreciation for biodiversity and supporting incidental learning.

Classrooms are oriented towards surrounding gardens and established trees, creating a biophilic environment. Views into leafy canopies foster a calming atmosphere, even as classrooms open outward in a counterintuitive but effective strategy that blends enclosure with connection.

Beyond performance, the building becomes a teaching tool, offering an experiential understanding of sustainability, ecology and custodianship. Functional systems – from copper pipes to digital building management – are often deliberately visible. Drainage pipes are refined in design or elegantly framed, ensuring they are aesthetically integrated rather than concealed.

AESTHETICS AND HERITAGE

The building intervenes in a complex and eclectic architectural context. Rather than mimic or reject the existing styles, Rebel Base Collective employed a contextually responsive approach. Drawing cues from the campus’s historical mix of mid-century, neo-classical, Art Deco, Edwardian and Victorian buildings, the new structure

incorporates references to and interpretations of the various architectural languages around the campus to make a bold, contemporary contribution. Where needed, it makes a strong architectural statement: at entrance points, for instance – although there is no single ‘front’ of this building – and sweeping overhangs and cantilevered bridges. Elsewhere, it is sensitive and deferential. The pod-like configuration means that from certain angles, individual pods appear to align with adjacent existing buildings, integrating rather than isolating the new intervention.

The roof pitch is carefully calibrated to meet neighbouring buildings at appropriate scales, enhancing rather than competing with the prominence of key landmarks such as the chapel. Sightlines and framing devices invite fresh appreciation of these older structures, positioning the new building as a lens through which the campus can be reinterpreted.

In its detailing, the building balances pedagogical intention with moments of wit and delight. Inverted arches reference and highlight similar but previously overlooked elements on campus. A playful reinterpretation of the classical colonnade uses slender steel columns to lead people through the building, rather than up to it.

This motif continues in plan, where scalloped facades form shaded walls that moderate temperature and create nooks with built-in benches. These pockets offer comfort, sociability and flexibility, inviting organic use rather than prescribed behaviour.

Deep overhangs similarly provide shelter and help blend the new structure into its context. Landscaping softens the transition further. While the indigenous planting contrasts with the formal English gardens near the chapel and wetland, the interface is gentle, inviting and reciprocal – a soft connection that draws the existing into the new.

MATERIALS

The material palette reflects the school’s values of practicality, robustness and honesty. Red brick and rendering echo elements of the existing campus, while concrete, steel and aluminium components are locally made and crafted.

This emphasis on local manufacture supports skills development and employment, and the carefully crafted materiality conveys respect for the builders and their craft. In this way, the building itself becomes an extended teaching opportunity, humanising the very fabric of the campus itself.

CONCLUSION

Khanyisa – the name given to the building after an inclusive process which involved girls from Grade 4 to Grade 12 – is more than an architectural statement. Meaning ‘to illuminate’ or ‘bring light’, the name signals its role as a space for discovery, growth and future learning. It is not a final or fixed gesture but a dynamic contribution to the ongoing life of the school.

It reframes how the campus is navigated, perceived and understood. It marks a significant moment in the school’s architectural evolution while remaining aware of its place in a longer continuum. Above all, it enriches school life by creating the spatial conditions for curiosity, joy and learning to flourish.

Professional team

Architects: Rebel Base Collective (Vedhant Maharaj, Sarah de Villiers, Masseeha Buckus) Structural engineers: ADA Consulting Engineers Mechanical, electrical and wet services engineers: CKR Consulting Engineers Quantity surveyors: EthiQS Contractor: LV Projects Electrical contractor: D&R Electrical Plumbing contractor: Oaktree Plumbing