ELPHICK PROOME ARCHITECTURE: Collaboration and Innovation Keep EPA Building and Growing

Committed to architectural excellence, EPA creates exciting buildings, environments and spaces with functionality at their heart. Established in 1989, George Elphick, Founding Director, details the formation of the business and the foundations which have been fundamental to its success today.

“Nick and I had known one another for some years,” he says of his longstanding partnership with fellow Founding Director Nick Proome, “before we decided to embark on our own architectural practice on the basis of being awarded a small industrial project in Durban. That was nearly 35 years ago, since which time we have built a practice consisting of two offices in our Durban stomping ground, where we have grown into a large and renowned practice within the South African architectural professional context.

“We have achieved this quickly in a relatively small city, and in the context of the reduced scope for work it offers.” On this point, he says, it has been vital for EPA to adopt a can-do, master of all trades approach.

“We have found it imperative to be architects who take on work of any nature and scale. We are not specialists, per se, but have had to learn and develop competences within almost every sphere – commercial, residential, hospitality, health, industrial and mixed use and others, as the opportunities have arisen.”

CONTEXTUAL RESPONSE

A more than three-decade legacy now sees EPA comprise three dynamic and capable architectural practices, created to deliver a complete and comprehensive range of design services in the African continent and beyond. “We created our second practice, Elphick Proome Studio, as an affirmative action collaborative, undertaking retail and commercial projects and engaging in educational and institutional projects in the South African context,” Elphick details.

The third practice is Elphick Proome Architects International (EPI), based in Grand Baie, Mauritius. 15 African countries have been uplifted by its work, with many of these projects brought to fruition in collaboration with locally-based architects, yielding highly successful outcomes. “We have one ethos and one culture, but independent practices that respond specifically to particular needs,” Elphick summarises.

“EPA was conceived with a vision to create quality design solutions that offer enduring and innovative, functional design solutions appropriate to the context, region and climate. Simply put, a contextual response is the cornerstone of our approach, which has taken us across the whole continent and even into Europe.

“Fundamentally we are an African practice and as such we consider ourselves able to respond to the African condition, which is inherently Afro-centric, and requires a distinct ability to be particularly resourceful from the inception of a project all the way through to its execution.”

A PEERLESS PORTFOLIO

“We have gone from a very small entity to an appreciable practice which has offered a huge amount to the African architectural and development world.” EPA’s contribution is now permanently etched in the African landscape, in the form of a design portfolio steeped in historic and class-leading constructions.

It is EPA’s ability to be flexible, agile and resilient in its service that has brought about such a breadth of completed projects. “Each design solution represents a very particular journey, all different in nature but with notably successful outcomes. The spread reflects our commitment to specific responses, rather than a branded approach that promotes a similarity between buildings,” Elphick assesses, highlighting the office buildings of RCL Foods as a singularly special opportunity offered to EPA.

“This was a collaborative effort between numerous parties,” he details, “an integrated process of developer, landlord, contractor, ourselves and many others all working on the project at once. The resulting collaboration, I believe, created the energy to drive what is widely recognised as a building with a very discernible African quality. Internally especially, to the extent that our interior design arm won the global award in 2017 for that project.”

The edifice, it transpired, was a key element in a much wider strategy for RCL. “This building was designed to facilitate the creation of Africa’s best and largest food company, to vigorously take on those really big brands that exist both national and globally. It allowed RCL to amalgamate a series of different businesses under a single umbrella, bringing together five or 10 disparate cultures into a single new whole and the building was one of the significant tools used by RCL to drive the new culture, extremely successfully.

“We have in turn used it extensively to further our own collaborative capabilities. Rather than be the dictatorial architect, we tend to listen a lot before we engage, and it all routes back to our love of developing relationships across the board.”

EPA’s Investec building was an entirely different venture to create a premium-grade banking corporate, Elphick explains. “This was a very tough project in many ways,” he admits, “to assimilate for South Africa’s homegrown international bank what had been done elsewhere in London, Zurich, Johannesburg and Cape Town, and make something of the brand that was predetermined. We took that brief and amplified it to create a very elegant building, which is still recognised as one of the premier office buildings in the country in terms of its architecture, its interior and its methodology to promote business.”

For Unilever, meanwhile, EPA was appointed to take on what was to be used by the British multinational as a landmark industrial project. “This particular building was to be earmarked as the new standard for Unilever’s industrial processes. We had to design and document it within a three-week timeframe, which we accomplished, and created a building which became their icon globally for two years.

“It is a highly successful food plant crammed with strong architectural metaphors and a very complicated series of industrial processes. It was one of the very first buildings to be entirely off the grid from a water perspective, too, at a time when the sustainability agenda was but a fledgling idea. We are very proud to have been involved and forged some valuable relationships at the same time.”

EXCITING ENDEAVOURS

Despite the slowdown in spending and nervousness within the commercial sphere, EPA has a lot of new business keeping it busy, learning and growing at present. “We have recently commenced a very sophisticated and substantial new head office building for some big clients of ours, GRIT and their development company Gateway Real Estate Africa (GREA), in Mauritius,” Elphick reveals.

“We are also currently at the design phase of a local university for a Japanese company which undertakes an MBA programme for its employees and others, another fascinating new project upon which we are beginning to embark.”

One proposal that suffered terribly both pre and throughout Covid is the largest mixed-use project in South Africa, the Oceans Development in uMhlanga. “This is a very exciting project which has gathered significant interest in the architectural and development world,” Elphick states. “It has a substantial, high-grade retail and public interface podium, and then three towers on which we are the lead architects.” One of these is a new, 207 room Radisson Blu hotel, a high-end complex featuring luxury apartments.

This is yet another example of collaboration proving decisive for EPA, where it is teaming up with LYT and Ruben Reddy Architects to deliver this new urban resort. “It is well underway for completion by the end of 2023,” Elphick informs us, “which is a great relief for us on such a critical project in one of SA’s primary holiday destinations. For the last two to three months there has been a lot of activity, and the biggest number of cranes Durban has ever seen on a single site.

“Through all of our past, and these current, projects, we have enjoyed excellent collaborations with other well-known architectural practices in the US, in France and in Britain,” Elphick adds, recognising that these alliances are going to prove crucial as EPA looks to extend its reach even further.

GROWING THE FOOTPRINT

“A lot of developers in South Africa are questioning their rollout of anticipated pre-Covid developments at the moment,” Elphick describes, “so we feel almost bullish about opportunities we see elsewhere on the continent. We have a wide network to draw on and Africa is very much a growth area for us.

“Our engagement and establishment of a practice in Mauritius was somewhat fortuitous, a chance meeting with a young architect on the same flight as me heading back to settle in Mauritius following many years in this country. Within a month this had blossomed into what would become a thriving practice.

“We saw a distinct opportunity as we had a very strong client in Mauritius, for whom we are the preferred architect, who was engaging specifically in projects throughout Africa. This presented a very distinct and obvious synergy and prompted us to establish an international practice through which all of our work taking place outside of South Africa, or the SADC, is channelled. 

“Our long-term plan is to grow that even further,” Elphick goes on, “into a practice of perhaps five or 10 people. It will give us the gravitas we need to amplify our work in the Indian Ocean islands, where we see vast opportunities in terms of bringing an established South African practice to them, something which has not happened before in a territory mainly dominated by homegrown branches. We have identified a big gap for hospitality, and even more so possibly for commercial and industrial in a growing environment.”

Having already done so much in such a relatively short space of time, and seized every opportunity to extend its network, competences and reach, EPA will now look to do much more with the abundant openings still available to it with its current setup. “We have no intention of opening other practices at this moment. We have collaborated with some very well-known outfits in London and New York, for example, on other African projects, and have established relationships throughout Africa with other institutions. There is a certain reciprocity with this, too, where we become the representatives of other international practices in an African context.

“Once again, this is all seeded in the principal of forging and promoting partnerships and affiliations. Our long-term consideration is that we will face certain challenges in South Africa in the next 10 years and while the market here is not shrinking – it will certainly hold its own – neither is it massively expanding.

“We believe therefore that our sustainability will derive from having this much bigger, more varied footprint,” is Elphick’s closing assessment. “Our endeavour is to continue travelling through Africa, as we have been since 1997, forging many new relationships and exploring numerous prospects along the way.

“We have found over the years that we tend to attract work that we have already done, and one thing that we see as a strength in our business is the ability handle many building types,” he adds. “We are capable in many areas, by necessity and through the experience we have accrued, and this will stand us in excellent stead to grow the business further.”