Sandton City is a shopping center in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa. It was founded and owned by the property development company Rapp and Maister. The center opened its doors to the public on September 12, 1973. The center has a gross leasable area of 128,000m2 of retail space. The office space combined with the Sandton Sun Hotel increase the total area to 215000m2. Together, Sandton City and the adjacent Nelson Mandela Square (formerly Sandton Square) form one of the largest retail complexes in Africa. A pyramid-shaped roof was added in the 1990s and provides the distinguishing architectural feature of Sandton City. It is the focal point of an area around which Africa's richest square mile-and-a-half was built.HistorySandton City was built as a twenty-one storey, concrete block shopping center that opened in late 1973. It is an example of the Brutalist architecture that was common in South Africa in the early 1970s, which is often referred to as "Apartheid Architecture" because of its austerity and scale, and because the Apartheid government used this style in most administrative and state buildings at that time. The architecture is also seen in the Golden Acre (Goue Akker), a similar shopping center built in Cape Town before the construction of Sandton City, the International Terminal at the airport in Johannesburg, the Carlton Center, the new Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg, and the JG Strijdom (since renamed the Hillbrow Tower) in Hillbrow, Central Johannesburg. Most of these buildings were conceived in the late 1960s.
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