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Built with a miscellany of reclaimed materials, including the sandstone from the surrounding landscape, Skaam Cabin is a prime example of salvage architecture. -
Most of the facade comprises gabion walls constructed from reclaimed telecoms cable trays filled with sandstone, camouflaging the cabin in the process. -
The rest of the facade is clad in repurposed Oregon pine floorboards that have been treated with the Japanese shou sugi ban method. -
The rocky ledge on which the cabin was built informed its multilevel design. -
Designed by owner Wynand Goosen, the interior features a host of bespoke furniture and fittings, including a fireplace build from fl at sheets of reclaimed steel. -
The interior floorboards and the kitchen island’s end-grain countertop are reclaimed bamboo flooring sourced from a former gym. -
The open-plan living area offers a bird’s-eye view of the mountainous landscape, best experienced from the low-slung five-metre-long bay window. Wynand designed several steel sculptures, now scattered around the property, that echo the often-geometric lines of the rocky landscape. -
The open-plan living area offers a bird’s-eye view of the mountainous landscape, best experienced from the low-slung five-metre-long bay window. Wynand designed several steel sculptures, now scattered around the property, that echo the often-geometric lines of the rocky landscape. -
The gabion walls feature in selected interior areas, including this bar counter that’s perfect for sundowners. -
The Fantasy Room is an optional extra for visiting couples. -
A coal stove keeps bath time cosy in winter. -
It’s only upon closer inspection that the cabin emerges from its dramatic Limietberg backdrop. -
The two wings of the cabin connect via a dramatic walkway. -
To minimise ecological impact, the walkways – made of mentis grating from old telecoms infrastructure – are raised. -
The muted palette of browns and greys, echoed in the salvaged materials, was deliberately chosen to blend into the surroundings. -
The abstract sculptures dotted around the property were built by the same contractor responsible for all the steelwork. -
The cabin’s substructure is built of compressed wood from repurposed shipping creates, adding materiality to the bedroom’s coffered ceiling. -
Clad in timber treated in the shou sugi ban style, and roofed with flat metal sheeting that’s been allowed to oxidise, one of the self-contained bedrooms opens up onto a deck with a wood-fired hot tub.
There’s nothing bashful about Skaam Cabin. Built almost entirely from reclaimed materials the remote getaway off Bainskloof Pass is unafraid to bare it all – and it encourages its guests to follow suit.
WORDS Annette Klinger PHOTOS Jan Ras PRODUCTION Mark Serra
Architectural salvage – the practice of sourcing materials from demolitions and repurposing them for new builds – can be many things. Sustainable? Certainly: it diverts waste from landfill and contributes to a circular economy. Trendy? Indubitably: adaptive reuse is front and centre in a host of recent award-winning builds. Aff ordable? Not necessarily – at least not in the case of Skaam Cabin, a little sandstone-and-timber bungalow situated on a rocky ledge on the Limietberg mountain.
Requiring about three kilometres of off-roading after turning off the meandering Bainskloof Pass, the rocky site couldn’t be more off-the-grid if it tried. This remoteness was both a blessing and a curse for its designer and owner, Wynand Goosen, whose pursuit of a secluded eco-cabin was not without challenges. “Nobody delivers anything here,” he says. “We had to bring everything up ourselves. During the project, I think I drove about 90 000km, and spent about half-a-million rand on diesel – just to get stuff.”
From the outset, he wanted to use reclaimed materials as far as possible. What this meant was near-constant adaptation of his original plans. “The one thing I’ll never be is a quantity surveyor,” says Wynand, who designed and built the cabin through a process of trial, YouTube and error. “We learnt many expensive lessons – stuff nobody tells you about beforehand.”
Initially, Wynand wanted the entire cabin clad in timber treated in the Japanese shou sugi ban style. On Facebook Marketplace, he sourced what he believed to be 150m2 of Oregon pine floorboards, but which, during the build, transpired to be 50m2 of planks, many of which had lost their tongue- and-groove joints. With necessity the ever-faithful mother of invention, Wynand came up with a Plan B for the rest of the exterior walls, courtesy of a local peddler with a warehouse full of salvaged goods.
“I went there to buy mentis grating that had been reclaimed from old telecoms infrastructure, to use for the cabin’s walkways – and then I saw that he had about 2 000 network cable trays,” says Wynand. “I bought a few and experimented with using them as gabion cages, filling them with the sandstone that lay all around the site. It worked so well that we ended up doing it for the entire front facade.”
The laundry list of reclaimed materials used in the build also includes – but isn’t limited to – rejected steel flat sheets (allowed to oxidise, then treated and used for the roof, window and door shrouds, as well as sculptures); plywood from marine shipping crates (transformed into substructure walls); bamboo floorboards from a former gym (now starring as flooring and an end-grain kitchen countertop); and 3 000 old, damaged bricks that were destined for the dump. While by no means a large quantity of bricks in a conventional build, on Wynand’s site, every single one of the 3 000 made its presence known. “It took a whole day just to bring them up to the site,” he says. “We brought them up 500 at a time, loading them onto a bakkie and trailer down at the main road, driving them up, unloading them, then bringing the next 500.”
Wynand admits that he severely underestimated the time, logistics and cost involved in building with reclaimed materials – but he nailed his self-imposed brief. As you approach the cabin from the foot of the valley, the sandstone facade is so visually similar to the rocky landscape that it blends almost entirely into its backdrop. Allowing the landscape to shine, the interior – also designed by Wynand – is appropriately spartan, echoing the trifecta of
materials visible from outside, but in a more polished incarnation. One of his favourite spaces in the cabin is the open-plan lounge with its low-slung five-metre-long bay window that evokes an observation slot in a very rarefied bird hide.
“Sitting there, it really feels as though you’re floating in the air, looking out over the river and mountains,” he says. He also has a soft spot for one of the cabin’s secret features, which is only accessible via a bespoke lift – made with reclaimed steel, naturally. An industry-first, the Fantasy Room is an optional extra for couples who want to add a cheeky twist to their romantic getaway. We could tell you more about it – but you might find yourself feeling a little skaam… | skaamcabin.co.za
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