A very ordinary power: The evolution of the electrical substation in Pietermaritzburg, 1900-1960.
Abstract
Pietermaritzburg is a city in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, characterised
by a central core of late Victorian-era buildings. It was in this period that
electrification arrived, bringing with it new challenges in the provision of
infrastructure and its ancillary requirements. One such adjunct to electrification
was the need to provide for structures to house transformers and substations
and these had to be integrated into an already existing urban infrastructure.
As primarily utilitarian buildings, they had a single function which was to
house the mechanisms of electrical power. However, simultaneously, they had
to exist as palatable pieces of architecture within an already largely constructed
city-scape. This cogent awareness of built environment is reflected in the
design of many of the substations, which are modest, constructed within the
prevailing architectural style of the time, and as a result blend in entirely with
the city fabric as it exists. They also tell the story of the arrival of one of the
cornerstones of our modern existence, namely power, and elucidate its part
in the creation of new areas of the city and the march of “progress” from the
centre outwards.