Clive Chipkin was born in Yeoville in 1929 and, apart from a short period in the UK, lived in Johannesburg for the rest of his life. His wife, Valerie, whom he married in 1959, died in 2015 and it was in her honour that the archive of his historic research, located at Wits University, was named in 2017. Chipkin is survived by three children, Peter, Lesley and Ivor, five grandchildren and one great grandchild.

Over a 40-year period Chipkin wrote and published two books, Johannesburg Style – Architecture & Society 1880’s to 1960’s and Johannesburg Transition – Architecture & Society from 1950. A third book, Johannesburg Diversity, has been completed but not yet published.

Johan Lagae commented in a Mail & Guardian article that the two published books demonstrate “…that a love for the design profession, societal engagement and scholarly seriousness are not necessarily mutually exclusive but rather can reinforce one another, his work holds important lessons for the writing of architectural history well beyond the South African context.” 

In recognition of his contribution to the history and understanding of the city of Johannesburg, Wits University awarded Chipkin with an honorary doctorate in 2013. Chipkin was more of an historian than a conservationist, thinking of the city as an ever-changing organism that replaces itself continually.

Chipkin described himself as “…a good Modern Movement, vernacular architect” but, in his typically self-effacing way he, talking about his part in the Congress of the People at Kliptown in 1955, claimed that “… I designed the toilets, which were gum poles. I have no hesitation claiming it was my greatest work, my claim to history. I have no doubt that some of the great people used my toilets; buckets, hessian, gum poles.” (From Mike Alfred’s interview, circa 2004). 

Ironic and funny, he made light of his considerable achievements as well as his political commitment which was unquestionable. The full interview by Alfred can be found here. 

Chipkin designed a great number of beautiful buildings, always with meticulous detailing and displaying a love of materials. Examples are University Gate on Jan Smuts Avenue, the canteen for Cape Gate that he did in collaboration with Jeff Stacey as well as his family home in Craighall Park which was filled, floor to ceiling, with pictures and books.

One could say that Chipkin was an anti-hero but he was emphatically not lacking in idealism, courage and morality; he simply did not like the idea of heroic “saviours” in the world of architecture or in any other field.

Chipkin was a marvellous source of encouragement and support, he is remembered by a great number of younger architects who came to know him and who will miss him enormously. 

Colin Coleman worked for Chipkin as a student in the mid-1980s and remembers how sympathetic he was to the anti-apartheid activist work that Coleman was involved in. Sarah Calburn remembers him on a personal as well as professional level after growing up next door to the Chipkin family – see Calburn’s memory of Chipkin which is also located on the SAIA website. Jeff Stacey and Chipkin collaborated to produce some wonderful work in the mid-1980s of which the canteen building for Cape Gate was one, where workers and management were encouraged to have their meals together in an expression of hope and optimism that was rare in those days.

I met Chipkin in 1983 when I went to see him for a job interview. He encouraged me to start my own practice and we immediately became firm friends. He drew me into a group of architects attempting to hold the architectural profession accountable for its assistance to the apartheid state. The group aimed for changes to the Architects Act of 1970 as well as the Code of Conduct of the Institute of South African Architects (ISAA).

Chipkin, Ivan Schlapobersky and Hans Schirmacher, founders of Architects Against Apartheid (AAP), expressed views that many of my contemporaries were unwilling to take up and I, and the other young architects who were involved, learned enormously from them. The group included many young as well as older architects who should be listed (not a complete list) here – Lindsay Bremner, Jeff Stacey, Martin Musiker, Alan Schwartz, David Walker and Mike Sutton, Hylton Smith, Barry Gould, Ishwar Dayabhai, Tony Wilkinson and Angus Greig were a few…. 

I feel that this is an opportunity to elaborate on and record the events that took place and that Chipkin was so intimately involved in with complete conviction. Chipkin never held grudges and it is not my purpose to rake up the dying embers of bitterness but to celebrate the role that he played in creating new paths of hope and optimism out of defeat.

While other professions were challenging the National Party in the 1980s, the architectural profession remained co-opted servants of the state. 

“As a profession the architects, though, were as quiet as mice. Many were too busy nibbling away at the great apartheid cheese, preoccupied with all those structures of separate development such as segregated ‘homelands’, learning institutions, vast complexes for the proliferating bureaucracies, police headquarters where the writ of habeas corpus did not apply, resettlements from Pageview to District Six and palaces for tin-pot dictators.” (Chipkin, Schlapobersky, Paine: 1994). 

Chipkin was not one of those that had been co-opted and never undertook a government commission until after 1994. The ethical debate raised by AAP will probably never be resolved by the profession and, sadly, no submission to the TRC was ever made by the institute – the background to AAP can be read in Basil Brink’s excellent paper.

AAP proposed that architects should be barred by their code of ethics from undertaking work for the state. A resolution was proposed that would make it unethical for architects to:

• Design any buildings restricted for use on the grounds of race;
• Design any building (other than housing) in the “homelands” which would promote the policy of separate development; and
• Design any building which would assist in enforcing apartheid, eg, police stations, law courts, prisons etc.

A meeting was called by the members, which turned out to be the best attended meeting in the history of the Transvaal Provincial Institute of Architects, with members being bussed in from the politically conservative Northern Transvaal. After a proposal by Hans Schirmacher, seconded by Chipkin, a vote to have the resolution “not put” was taken. Roughly 300 members of the 500 present voted that no discussion take place and the meeting was closed after 30 minutes. No debate!

Schirmacher, Jeff Stacey and Leon van Schaik resigned in disgust from the ISAA, as it was then, and emigrated. There is no doubt that Chipkin’s (as well as others) career was negatively affected by his stand against apartheid. He experienced phone tapping and continual surveillance. His son Ivor remembers an incident where Chipkin walked out of his house to the police car parked outside and invited the cops in for tea. With squealing tyres they screeched off without taking up the invitation, never to return!

It was clear to those involved in AAP that the ISAA was not going to change and a new direction was sought. The energy created by the struggle with AAP was carried forward by Chipkin and Schlapobersky to form the Alexandra Arts Centre Drafting Course where other courses were already being given in ceramics, music, painting and drawing etc. In 1993, on his return from exile, Alan Lipman was introduced to the group by Chipkin and he joined the staff of teachers. Chipkin continued, against all odds, to labour on this project which assisted some 140 students in architectural drafting over a seven-year period until it was dissolved in the mid-1990s having moved from Alexandra Township to Joubert Park.

Now that AAP is gone, is it not still worth questioning what architects should be working on from an ethical point of view? Prisons, where rehabilitation is scarce and overcrowding is the norm? Nkandla? Mass housing without humanity? Should issues such as these be debated now that we live under a democratically elected government? Would the questions that should be asked be made into debates about other issues entirely; would they be about who is asking the questions rather than about the questions themselves?

Although he died aged 91, I join Sarah Calburn in repeating and lamenting that it was too soon. There are many, many people who will miss Clive Chipkin. I have had notes from and conversations with Kathy Munro, Sarah Calburn, Alan Schwartz, Michael Sutton, David Walker, Alan Schwartz, Ivan Schlapobersky, Colin Coleman and many others who have contributed to this obituary. DM

Henry Paine has been practising architecture for more than 30 years.