About this archive

This is an archive of the built work of David Oved and Avi Lerner, architects who worked in partnership in South Africa. It gathers oral history, family photographs and whatever paper record survives, and it treats all of that as a work in progress rather than a finished account.

The research is being put together by Dan Oved, David's son, who leads it. He is consulting Avi Lerner, David's partner in the practice, and Rafa Salim, who lives in Johannesburg.

Every building on this site carries a confidence level. Confirmed means a document backs the claim. Probable means it is well supported but not yet settled. Unconfirmed — the default — means it rests on memory alone. None of these labels are permanent: they change as sources turn up.

Map positions carry the same caution. A solid marker means the site has been placed with some confidence; a dashed circle means only the general area is known, and the exact site is still to be found.

Dates here are not certificates. Each one carries its basis — a caption, a press clipping, an interview, a slide mount — shown alongside the year, because a remembered year and a documented one are not the same kind of fact.

Photographs come from two places: the family's own prints and slides from the time, and new photographs of the buildings as they stand today. More are still being gathered; a building without any shows a placeholder rather than a stand-in image.

© 2026 Dan Oved. Shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0).

The writing on this site, and the family's own photographs and drawings, may be shared and adapted for non-commercial purposes, as long as you credit the Oved & Lerner Archive and link back to the page you took them from.

Some material here belongs to other people, and the licence above does not cover it. Photographs by named photographers are marked © with the photographer's name. Newspaper and magazine pieces belong to their publishers and are shown for reference. Ask the rights holder before reusing any of these.

A photograph marked "rights unconfirmed" is one whose photographer has not been identified yet. Treat it as not covered by the licence until it has been.

The code that builds this site is released under the MIT License.