Portnet recently held a competition to design a Millennium Tower for the Port of Durban. The new tower to be sited on the Bluff will house Portnet’s new vessel tracking service and will replace the existing Port Control facility in the Durmarine Building. Under the aegis of the KwaZulu-Natal Institute for Architects, a competition was held to choose an appropriate design for the tower.

More than 50 KZN architectural practices submitted entries, 30 of which included models of their proposals. The competition was won by two young Durban architects Don Albert and Alex Pienaar. It is planned that construction of the R6,8 million tower will be completed early in 2001.

The quality of the submissions was excellent and a wide range of architectural solutions were offered. The Durban Art Gallery will host a display of the entries from April 3 to 23. These include towers modelled on human and animal figures, structurally exuberant sculptures, African and nautical imagery as well as a number of environmentally-responsive and energy-conservative proposals. There are also models built to impressive detail and many proposals which are lavishly illustrated with computer graphics and photomontages.

A multimedia presentation of the Millennium Tower will be held at the Red Eye @rt initiative on April 7 at 18h00.