fish hoek is a small coastal town on the cape peninsula. i have a vested interest in this little valley as i was born in falsebay hospital and grew up between the confines of the kalk bay mountains and elsies peak. i write grew up with reservation.
i have for many years been suggesting improvements to this little place and its industrialised main road. i did create several little booklets and plan layouts which i handed to community papers, community magazines , estate agents and business property owners on the main road. unfortunately the community papers and magazines didn't see any value in publishing my perspectives of improving the fish hoek main road.
so if folk cant see a value in your suggestions - blog about it. maybe someone out their has a similar little town they are emotionally attached to and can use the suggestions.
fish hoek has an a-list beach which is separated from the heart of the town by a railway line. which means the 2 operate independently from each other. another interesting development is that the beach accommodates cars more than it accommodates people. many years ago the municipality created parking on the beach which is a little money spinner for someone. so on a sweltering hot summers day cars clog up the bulk of the beach area - whilst the people squash themselves in a small sliver of sand and grass. Ive always marvelled at this. the effect is exaggerated when a great white shark makes an appearance and everyone leaves the water. now the little sliver of pedestrian area is completely crowded. high tide is also an interesting happening.
the railway line is not an attractive addition to this scenario and really spoils what could be an awesome beach town atmosphere.
here are my suggestions - and like most suggestions they are not easy to institute, they will take planning and hard work. but the rewards for all will be worth the effort.
firstly spoornet needs to relook at the railway line - why?- because it is my understanding that they sold off spoornet land on the clovelly side of fish hoek main road. and the flats that where built on this stretch did nothing to improve the atmosphere of fish hoek. infact between the face brick prison of a police station and the face brick spoornet flats - we have bricklane. so my suggestion to spoornet is this. -
the railway line can either be raised as in kalkbay or buried in a tunnel underground. just for the 200m from the railway station to the restaurant at the beach. i know the engineering will be both costly and difficult but it will allow the town to filter onto the beach.
the cars which now enjoy the bulk of the a-list beach can be housed in a 3 storey parking garage built on the parking ground in 1st avenue. this will allow folk to park their cars and filter through the shops on the way to the beach. like the algarve in portugal - a perfect example of sound design.
their are certain big corporates that own shops leading into fish hoek. these buildings turn their back on the main road and can be altered to reflect a more inviting facade.
a walkway can be added over the pavement on both sides of the fish hoek main road - this will create 2 levels of shop frontage as you would find in a mall - only this will be an open air shopping experience.
the garden of remembrance can couple as a sculpture garden and the circle at the end of fish hoek could have a coffee shop with walkways leading to it under the road.
kalkbay and simonstown have such wonderful atmosphere and most folk when riding through fish hoek have no reason to stop. although huge improvements have been made since i first started making these suggestions, i do feel the railway link , parking and certain buildings need architectural improvement before fish hoek reaches its full potential.
the above 2 presentation jpgs are an extreme form of getting attention. i read an article that fish hoek and muizenberg beach where zoned for 10 and 12 storey blocks of flats. so i decided to design a possible franken freakish scenario. the design keys into a revival of Gothic ideas with humanoid structure being sculpturely displayed on the outside of the buildings. definitely only to a few peoples taste and definitely bound to create the needed controversy for change.
i really do love these coral sort of lines - however i have found that conservative towns will go to great lengths to preserve their conservative ideals. i now live in muizenberg - for reasons best kept to myself this was a very wise move.
