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The existing walkway to the entrance, slicing through a garden courtyard, was preserved in the alteration by W Design Architecture Studio, as were the two outbuildings to the left and right. You enter the house through a “gap” in the wall. -
Seen from the firepit, the low-slung house – and the stoep in particular – seems to hover above the ground like an additional layer of the terraced garden. -
Everywhere, the house opens onto courtyards, pathways and greenery, connecting to the exterior in a variety of ways. The use of stone, slate and gravel adds a sense of texture and familiarity to the material palette. -
Everywhere, the house opens onto courtyards, pathways and greenery, connecting to the exterior in a variety of ways. The use of stone, slate and gravel adds a sense of texture and familiarity to the material palette. -
Everywhere, the house opens onto courtyards, pathways and greenery, connecting to the exterior in a variety of ways. The use of stone, slate and gravel adds a sense of texture and familiarity to the material palette. -
The main living space captures the light masterfully while allowing glimpses out in every direction – even up into the treetops via clerestory windows. The use of materials here (and throughout the house) is refined but restrained – “luxury without excess”, as the architects describe it. The emphasis is on creating a comfortable environment that ensures a wonderful experience of its setting, rather than distractions. -
Viewed from the stoep, the stone- clad bedroom wing is a solid, grounded counterpart to the “glass box” of the living space, creating cosiness and security. -
The gardens in the more private sections of the house “push right up against the facades”, says architect Johan Wentzel. -
Timber screens and slate crazy paving add to the timeless familiarity of the living area. With the screens drawn back, the space is totally transparent, almost like a pavilion. -
Sleek, monochromatic finishes in the bedroom, softened by timber accents, contrast beautifully with the more rugged, earthier materials outside. Skylights bring even more light into the interiors. -
Sleek, monochromatic finishes in the bedroom, softened by timber accents, contrast beautifully with the more rugged, earthier materials outside. Skylights bring even more light into the interiors. -
Sleek, monochromatic finishes in the bedroom, softened by timber accents, contrast beautifully with the more rugged, earthier materials outside. Skylights bring even more light into the interiors. -
The master bathroom, like all the bathrooms and bedrooms, opens to the garden via a single door, with the courtyard forming a private exterior room. It’s a strong indoor-outdoor connection that also ensures privacy -
The stoep and the living areas are light and open, like a classic modernist glass box, to let it the views of the garden and the park beyond. -
A large terraced vegetable garden outside the kitchen supplies the household with fresh produce.
WORDS Graham Wood PRODUCTION Annemarie Meintjes PHOTOS Paris Brummer
Designed by Johan Wentzel and Greta van As of W Design Architecture Studio, this family home in Pretoria’s old suburbs looks to almost forgotten lessons and familiar local materials to create a sense of “the familiarity of the new”.
It’s the kind of house you barely notice from its jacaranda-lined street in Waterkloof Ridge in Pretoria. It is “very low-profile”, says Johan Wentzel of W Design Architecture Studio, which he and his partner in life and work, Grete van As, founded together. Given the home’s spectacular setting, downplaying the grandeur of the entrance heightens the impact of what’s to come when you cross the threshold.
“When you enter, the first thing you see is the garden,” says Johan. It’s beautiful, with large, established trees and terraces, and with stone retaining walls running down to the “dog park”, as the locals call it (in reality, an expanse of lawns, woods and pools in a valley dropping down towards a dam). The boundary is barely discernible, so the garden seems to stretch on forever, as if the house were out in the countryside rather than in suburbia. “It always takes people by surprise,” he says.
And that’s the key to the design, say Johan and Grete: it’s about “looking outwards as opposed to being looked at”. Johan likes to quote the legendary American architect Louis Kahn, who said, “Design is not making beauty; beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love.” Johan and Grete’s task, as they perceived it, was not so much to create beauty as to unlock it – to facilitate an experience.
Seen from the bottom of the garden, the house almost disappears among the trees. It’s been built largely on the footprint of a pre-existing house, of which little more than the foundations and a few refurbished outbuildings remain. The original building was already surrounded by trees, and although Johan and Grete extended it somewhat, they were able to “push in underneath the foliage”, says Johan. As a result, the house looks as though it has been there for ages. It’s settled in, emerging more like a layer of history than a new arrival. In fact, while the living spaces and the stoep have a sense of space around them, floating above the view, around the bedrooms the gardens push right up against the house. It’s nestled in, and every room opens to the outside. This gives the bedrooms a more grounded, sheltered feeling than the open social areas of the home, which are more like a classic modernist glass box.
Another factor that contributes to this sense of being settled has to do with one of Johan’s favourite phrases: what he calls “the familiarity of the new”. By this, he means that he and Grete deliberately looked to familiar architectural solutions when designing and building this house, particularly when it came to selecting the materials. Rather than “recreating” or “reinventing” the house, they wanted to “refer” to something familiar and appropriate. Their approach was about “using solutions that have been known for hundreds of years, that were obvious in the past but got lost for some reason”.
They chose local materials that those familiar with Pretoria and its surrounds will remember from their grandparents’ and parents’ homes: slate crazy paving, stone from the site itself, gravel. There’s something comforting about these earthy, honest textures. In the same way that the house connects with the garden and the view, the materials connect not only with the site (actually using stone from the ground it’s built on) but with other certainties and comforts that exist in old memories, and the kind of continuities that make us feel secure and at home. Even the brise-soleils (another old but brilliant solution to Pretoria’s hot climate) are made from timber salvaged from the previous house.
Designing like this takes a great deal of restraint. Because it’s so much about emotion, the architects have to know when to stop, in order not to overdo anything. There’s a directness in this kind of architecture that can be lost when too many finishings are layered on. The ability of the house to evoke a powerful response can only be achieved when the light is just right, the connections are beautiful, the materials are rich, and the detailing just refined enough. It’s what Grete and Johan call “luxury without excess” or, as Johan puts it, “doing just what’s needed, doing it well, and then standing back”.
Only then, “space, light an order” – the things the great pioneer of Modernism, Le Corbusier, said we really need – are allowed their truest expression. What you experience is the garden, the view, the changing of the seasons. The house, more than anything, is there to enhance them, to make the experience. | wdas.co.za
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