Orlando Power Station, Soweto Towers
Twin cooling towers of a defunct power plant, now a bungee-jump platform wrapped in vivid township murals.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Orlando Towers in Soweto opens with a 2014 partial collapse of the old power station next door, and the tourist attraction that kept operating regardless. It traces the plant's history from 1955, cooled by sewage effluent from the nearby Klipspruit works, through its 1998 shutdown, to the bungee operation that took over the towers in 2009. Muralist Karabo Poppy Moletsane, whose family roots run through Soweto, is one of the artists behind the paintings now covering the concrete.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Sci-Bono Discovery Centre
Interactive science centre inside a converted early nineteen-hundreds tram power station and workshop.
Ponte City Apartments
Cylindrical fifty five story tower with a hollow core open to the sky, once filled with five stories of trash.
Soweto
Sprawling township of vibrant streets and murals, birthplace of the uprising that shook apartheid.
Maboneng Precinct
Post-industrial arts and culture district of converted warehouses, murals, markets and creative studios in a former no-go inner-city zone.
The Workers' Museum
Restored migrant-worker hostel with concrete bunks and a punishment room recalling apartheid-era labour conditions.
Arts on Main
Converted early-twentieth-century warehouses housing artist studios, galleries and a lively Sunday design market.