The Cape Town International Convention Centre, a major building costing the taxpayer millions, is up.
Standing on the grimy piazza in front of Artscape, boxed in by the brutal horror of the wind-tower to the east and the silly "remake" of the podium block of the Civic Centre, sadness overcomes the architecturally sensitive.
Is this what Cape Town - once a comfort, if clumsy, zone of good, sensible and, yes, interesting buildings - has become?
This area - once the upbeat pride of scheming engineers, clever town planners and some politicians who thrilled to their achievement of permanently burying the sea and the city's link to it - was envisaged as a dreamy architectural "portal to Africa".
What it is today is a human-hostile, soulless environment, and is the major reason for the failure of the Nico, renamed Artscape, as a people-friendly theatre centre.
What is strange is that so few Capetonians seem to worry or speak about it. Now a major construction has been completed in the precinct. The Cape Town International Conference Centre has changed completely the "entrance" to the city from the sea. Yet few public words about it have been uttered.
At an astounding price tag (mostly taxpayers' money), but also testimony to remarkable achievements in construction and design, there is no debate, no assessment, no polemical engagement about this major architectural project.
Oh yes, the hoopla for the opening came and went, but Cape Town's enthusiasm seems to be silence.
Could it be that the mesh of political correctness required in the process resulted in a compromising blandness that invites no reaction? What then to say about the new Cape Town International Conference Centre?
The CTICC authorities, Convenco, were at great pains to accentuate, in a strangely low-keyed PR approach, the nuts-and-bolts reality and constrains of what is, after all, envisaged as a very versatile utility. However, it is the Look of the thing that ordinary Capetonians encounter daily and have to live with. So what's that Look like?
One thing it isn't is a perky, (South) African-spirited, swaggeringly original construction that stops passers-by in their tracks.
Unlike a lot of contemporary downtown architecture elsewhere in the world, this is not a building-as-urban-landmark. Some would argue this is a grand opportunity missed.
From certain angles it's a mishmash that blends in with the service environment, warehouse style - nothing to notice. It's on the other side, the mountain face, that the utilitarian beast flashes its quiet beauty.
It's on Coen Steytler Avenue that glass and light, gentle metal, soft stone and sweet wood elegantly and invitingly fronts the show. It is here that high, bright expanses of geometric balances define the way CTICC business will be conducted - effectively and in good communal spirit.
Airport-like, the long hall's definition, walkways and galleries are stark, stylish and unassumingly modernist. If the space feels free and airy, careful detail underpins sleek openness. Glass, plants and many doors on the street invite one to enter.
Move towards the messy road configuration on the Waterfront side and the building comes to a harsh stop in the elbow of the descending highway. An add-on, soaring curve of stone, nomenclature and a rather mysterious high-glass window seems in practical reality not the refined solution the architects thought it might have been.
Above, the glossy, darkly glassy new hotel perches somewhat self-consciously, sapping the street dynamics of the centre below. Fortunately real water in the canal can liven up that entrance space. And, yes, the trees will grow. In fact, the use of indigenous plants is one of the great plusses. Shrubs and screen climbers will assert a more visual presence and trim the harsher edges of the spaces.
Come to think of it, the local greenery is about the only affirmation that this is a Cape building - unless one disregards the architecture and simply admires the magnificent view on Table Mountain from the ballroom.
- A host of local architects and companies were involved in the design. Revel Fox is credited as Principal Architect, and Anya van der Merwe Miszewski as Design Architect.