Roland van Rosenveld was born on 5 February 1958 in Cape Town. He attended Wynberg Boys' High School, matriculating in 1975 before completing two years of compulsory military service in the South African Navy as a radio operator during 1976 and 1977.
In 1978, he began studying architecture at the University of Cape Town, where he qualified with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1984. Roland became a director at DHK Architects in 1988, a position he held until 2002. In the same year, he founded South Architects, where he remains the majority shareholder. His professional work has focused extensively on the design and development of hospitals and healthcare facilities throughout South Africa.
One of his notable projects includes the Orthopaedic Centre of Excellence at Vincent Pallotti Hospital.
Beyond architecture, Roland has maintained a lifelong engagement with art and the natural world. His interests include scuba diving, underwater videography, surfing, painting, and sculptural models. Inspired by the underwater landscapes surrounding Cape Town, he has produced a series of artworks depicting marine life and ocean environments.
In addition to painting, Roland continues to experiment with organic sculptural forms and handcrafted creations that combine natural materials with industrial techniques - making use dried kelp, wire, and fibreglass
Roland’s spiritual journey began in 2009 following a period of severe depression after separating from his wife, the mother of his two sons. His search for meaning initially led him to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, which later evolved into what he calls The Way of AnD — a philosophy that seeks to reveal the simplicity, beauty, and underlying unity shared by the great Eastern and Western spiritual traditions once their peripheral differences are set aside.
Central to The Way of AnD is the idea that truth is not found through the accumulation of more conceptual knowledge, but through the dismantling of limiting beliefs and assumptions. As described within the teaching: “There is no ‘teacher’ to be found at the heart of AnD if by teaching is meant the addition of even more conceptual knowledge. If anything, this way is intended to liberate one from the faulty premises and beliefs that have served as the cornerstone of man’s knowledge and which have blinded him to The Truth.”
Your hypothesis is compelling. I am a mechanical engineer and have been in the underground mining industry most my career, close involvement with shafts and hoisting systems. My first thoughtful reaction to advance the hypothesis is to consider what sort of loads would need to be carried by the hoisting ropes, sheave drum axle shaft, etc and to consider that against what sort of materials were available at the time. I will not pretend that I know the answer, but I think that the confining constraint would be the hoist rope load capacity. Thank you for provoking more thought!
please take notice of Joseph Davidovits writings on the construction of the pyramids.
His decades long investigations show a very plausible theory of lost (and refound) technology including the development of and decline of the use of that technology, backed up by period texts
For an earlier and even more precise explanation, using actual information from ALL of the pyramids and mustabas, watch “The Great Pyramids Equation” here on Youtube. It deserves a lot more attention. https://www.youtube.com/@GreatPyramidsEquation
I really appreciate your dedication to solving the mystery of the construction of the Great Pyramids of Cheops. You’re an architect, and I’d recommend you familiarize yourself with the traces left in the Grand Gallery. These are the rhomboid marks on the side walls, right next to the benches. Why are they shaped this way? This is crucial, as it provides a clue to what the Grand Gallery was used for, as well as how the Great Pyramid was built.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DklodGJ8Bvo
Dear Roland,
You can see 3D-plan of Great Pyramid here https://youtu.be/IxhXggvMgC4
My best regards!
You may be an architect, but you’re no project manager.
Also, you keep talking about the builders using “basic tools” as if you knew when they were actually built and by who.
I’m happy to dismiss this presentation as fanciful and with no merit.
As a completely ordinary housewife with absolutely zero engineering credentials, I probably wasn’t your target audience but I wanted to say thank you for this experiment.
A week of social media had me knee-deep in videos confidently explaining how every impressive ancient achievement was proof of alien technology. Then along comes someone willing to do the hard work: test an idea, follow the evidence, and provide a logical explanation.
It is very sound, the idea that those chambers are part of the construction mechanism makes sense. Perhaps time to come up with new names, lets say King’s chamber becomes counterweight chamber. Not some crazy thing of how they are burial or relieving chambers. 100% with you, until something else comes up or until you refine it better.
Could the counterweight be made of numerous pieces, many, that can be easily moved back up, through the shaft itself or all the way round the , back and up the grand gallery? My bet is the shaft.
There is a lot to like in your theory Roland, so well done. I particularly like that for the first time, to my knowledge, you have provided a good reason for the dead-end tunnel in the subterranean chamber.
Your comments about the so-called relieving chamber not being necessary – except maybe because of your proposed shaft underneath the King’s chamber – are interesting. I’ve read many other observations that these chambers are unnecessary. Some have noted that the uneven nature of the tops of these “relieving” beams are odd and that maybe these have been selected or “tuned” to enhance certain harmonics.
Finally, I recommend reading the book “Building the Great Pyramid in a Year : An Engineer’s Report” by Gerard C. A. Fonte. Some of his ideas could enhance your own theory – the “in a year” claim is a little dubious in my opinion but the book is full of good engineering ideas. One of his most interesting discoveries is pictured in the cover – the used of quarter circle wooden form work pieces laid end-to-end that allow large blocks weighing over a tonne to be effectively rolled by a single person. This precludes the need for the use of sleds, ropes and teams of haulers in getting the limestone blocks from the quarry to the pyramid site.
Thank you to you (and to Graham) for your inspired efforts!