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The Carlton Centre: A Monument of Concrete and Contradiction

Rising 223 meters into the Highveld sky, the Carlton Centre was for nearly half a century the undisputed “king” of the African skyline. Completed in 1973, it held the title of the tallest building in Africa for 46 years—a reign that only ended in 2019 with the completion of The Leonardo in Sandton. It was designed by the prestigious American firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (the same minds behind the Burj Khalifa and Chicago’s Willis Tower), and its brutalist, reinforced concrete design was intended to be a “city within a city,” a symbol of South Africa’s then-booming industrial and mining economy.