Johannesburg’s CBD is a place of contradictions. Towering Brutalist monoliths stand beside delicate Art Deco façades, century-old buildings are repurposed into bustling markets, and steel and glass skyscrapers rise above streets that hum with the energy of thousands of lives intersecting. The city never stands still, and neither does its architecture. It’s a patchwork of past and present, grandeur and decay, rigid design and human adaptation.
Most of my exploration happens from the relative safety of my car, taking in the scenery as I navigate the city’s streets. There’s something almost surreal about seeing the stark, heavy forms of Brutalist architecture in a country as naturally breathtaking as South Africa. This is a land of sweeping savannas, rugged coastlines, and endless blue skies, yet in the heart of its largest city, you find cold, imposing slabs of concrete.
Designed in an era of control, these structures were never meant to be inviting. But Johannesburg has a way of defying intention. What should feel unyielding and harsh has, over time, become something else entirely. The rigid Brutalist buildings of the CBD have been softened, not by design, but by the people who inhabit them. Markets spill onto pavements, walls once bare are now covered in expressive graffiti and signs in a mix of languages, and windows glow with the warmth of new businesses, from tailor shops to bustling eateries. The very structures meant to impose order have, ironically, become a canvas for the city’s chaotic, vibrant spirit.
For years, piecing together the history of these spaces felt like detective work, digitally paging through dusty archives and hunting for scattered city records. Now, AI has turned that process on its head. I can snap a photo of a building, and within moments, I have its history at my fingertips.
AI-powered image recognition scans architectural features, compares them to historical databases, and pulls up blueprints, old photographs, and even news articles tied to the structure. It’s like having a time machine in my pocket. Instead of spending hours cross-referencing maps and old city plans, I can instantly uncover a building’s origins, its previous functions, and the economic and political forces that shaped it.
The real magic of AI isn’t just in identifying buildings, it’s in the unexpected connections it reveals. AI doesn’t just tell me when a building was constructed. It surfaces forgotten details, links structures by architects I hadn’t yet researched, and highlights how different economic shifts influenced entire neighbourhoods.
Sometimes, AI will bring up an old photograph showing a building in its prime, before decades of wear left their mark. Other times, it will unearth a long-forgotten article detailing its original purpose, maybe a former cinema that once played silent films or a department store that was the height of luxury in the 1950s. With AI, the city’s layers of history are no longer lost to time; they become accessible, waiting to be rediscovered.
Of course, AI doesn’t experience the city the way I do. It doesn’t hear the mix of languages spoken in the corridors of an old office block now turned into a residential high-rise, or smell the spices drifting from a former bank that used to house a restaurant (RIP The Thunder Walker). It doesn’t recognise how a once imposing government building has been reclaimed as a space for community and commerce.
But what AI does is give me a head start, turning hours of searching into seconds, so I can focus on what I love most, discovering how Johannesburg’s architecture, no matter how cold or brutal its origins, has been transformed into something human, warm, and endlessly alive.
By combining AI with my passion for architecture, I’m able to uncover the layers of Johannesburg’s history faster than ever before. This technology is more than just a tool, it’s a bridge between the past and the present, helping to tell the untold stories of the city’s shifting urban fabric.
Johannesburg’s buildings are silent witnesses to the city’s transformation. Some are preserved, others are repurposed, and a few are lost to time. But thanks to AI, their stories don’t have to fade into history. They can be rediscovered, one snapshot at a time.
