Book launch: Building Apartheid, On Architecture and Order in Imperial Cape Town, by Nicholas Coetzer

To celebrate the launch of Nicholas Coetzer's new book Building Apartheid, the Bartlett School of Architecture is hosting a launch event on the evening of Thursday 26th September.

All are invited to drinks and a talk by the author at Wates House, where a South African wine vital to the book itself will be served. The book will be available for a special reduced price at the event.

About the book

Through a specific architectural lens, Building Apartheid: On Architecture and Order in Imperial Cape Town exposes the role the British Empire played in the development of apartheid. Through reference to previously unexamined archival material, the book uncovers a myriad of mechanisms through which Empire laid the foundations apartheid was built on. It unearths the significant role British architects and British architectural ideas played in facilitating white dominance and racial segregation in pre-apartheid Cape Town. The book also provides a timely mirror for the machinations currently at play in establishing a 'post-apartheid' architecture and urbanity in the 'new' South Africa. The book is published via Ashgate. 

About the author

Nicholas Coetzer is a former PhD student at the Bartlett School of Architecture. His interest in space, identity and power was defined through his thesis 'The Production of the City as a White Space: Representing and Restructuring Identity and Architecture, Cape Town, 1892-1936.' He is currently associate professor of Architecture and Planning at the University of Cape Town.