-
A porthole window perfectly frames a view of the city featuring the iconic Hillbrow Tower. -
Nicholas wanted a house that would make passers-by stop in their tracks. The house is designed to be safe and secure without the necessity for burglar bars and an alarm system. -
The original miner's house that Nicholas bought in Richmond was built in the 1920s. Jo designed the new house to reflect the Art Deco heritage of that time. -
The first floor was designed without any walls between the spaces intended for the bedroom and the kitchen. The bedroom will be separated from the kitchen by moveable cupboard units. -
A tall window above the French doors for the bedroom-to-be space lets in beautiful light to the house. The ground floor doesn’t open up much to the outdoors otherwise. -
The downstairs space as seen from the mezzanine floor. Downstairs grew to a tall volume to accommodate the mezzanine once they decided to create additional space for a study. -
A staircase leads up from the introverted downstairs space to the mezzanine floor, which will be used as a study. -
“Nicholas is a really good designer and incredibly imaginative person,” Jo says. He is excited to see how Nicholas will fill the space. “It is designed so he can do anything he likes with it.” -
The windows on the upper floor open the space up to an expansive view of Johannesburg. “Although you’re up above the city, you still feel connected to the ground because of the tree that’s right outside,” says architect Jo Noero.
PHOTOS Dook PRODUCTION Annemarie Meintjes WORDS Bibi Slippers
What happens when Pieter-Dirk Uys introduces a visionary architect to an imaginative display designer? In the first of a two-part series, we show you the house and exhibition space that Jo Noero created for Nicholas de Klerk – before the big move in.
When Nicholas de Klerk was first introduced to Jo Noero and his work by mutual friend Pieter Dirk-Uys, he knew he had found the architect he’d been looking for. Nicholas had a tiny miner’s house in Richmond, Johannesburg, which he wanted to convert into a space suitable to house himself and his extensive collection of Coca-Cola memorabilia.
Jo understood from the get-go that Nicholas was imagining a show-stopper: “He told me he wants the kind of house that makes passers-by stop, reverse, look again and utter expletives. I think we’ve unashamedly tried to make a beautiful house with great spaces.”
Jo decided to build on the footprint of the old house to make the building process more sustainable. “We didn’t knock down any of the external walls and we built on the existing foundations.”
Initially, Nicholas just wanted to add a second floor for the exhibition space, but then there was talk of another bedroom and a study. “The ground floor grew to quite a tall volume and we inserted a mezzanine floor. We moved away from the idea of a conventional house with different rooms. What we managed to create was one very big space with a whole lot of bits and pieces in it, which gives Nicholas a huge amount of flexibility to move things around.”
The exterior design reflects the Art Deco era when the original house was built, but Jo also tried to imagine what a small villa in a city should be like today. “Nicholas was keen for us to find a spatial way of expressing the condition of living in Johannesburg without having to put in burglar bars or alarms. The solution was to make the downstairs space quite introverted; it doesn’t really open out onto any outdoor space. You get lots of light coming in, but the space is safe, secure and inwardly focused. Then you go up to the top floor and you have this huge, beautifully proportioned space that just throws itself open to the view. We thought of downstairs as the boiler room, where everything happens, and upstairs as a more cerebral space.”
The final product has been five years in the making. “We built it slowly, as Nicholas has been able to afford it, adding bit by bit. It’s a nice way to build; things have time to mature. It’s a little like slow food. I’m starting to believe in slow building.”
Jo is excited to see what happens when Nicholas moves in: “It’ll be interesting to see how robust the house is and how well the spatial idea matches Nicholas’s ideas about occupation. I’m eager to see what’s been lost and what’s been gained; I suspect we’ll find a lot has been gained.”
Have a look at our Q&A with Jo Noero here.
