Building a home in Southdowns Estate in Irene forced architect and owner Friedrich Strey to dream big and think even bigger. After many years of planning and hard work, the house is everything he could have hoped for.

They say all good things come to those who wait. In this case, patience, determination and hard work got architect Friedrich Strey and his wife Wilna through nearly a decade of planning, designing and constructing the place they now call home: a contemporary farm-style house in Southdowns Estate, Irene. The vision for the house was threefold: “to show that one can be sustainable, even in the city; to experiment with different materials, test the capacity of unskilled labour, and recycle and reuse existing materials; and thirdly to use the building as an office while enjoying the lifestyle a farm in the city has to offer.”

The homestead consists of four structures. A barn houses the living areas and bedrooms. Two sheds house the Strey Architects office and there is a loft apartment constructed from light gauge steel framing. A reclaimed brick silo houses the staircase and library lookout, and acts as a link between the office and the living areas. “Double-glazed stacking doors fold away to blur the boundary between the inside and outside living areas,” says Friedrich. “A timber deck forms an extended living or dining area, as well as a pavilion to the lap pool. The pool also serves as water feature and passive cooling device during the hot Highveld summers.”

In this home everything centres on the kitchen, which, in typical South African fashion, is the heart of the house. “One can watch the kids play in the garden or swim in the pool from the glass niche protruding from the kitchen while sipping a cocktail or catching up on social media,” he says. Friedrich designed and assembled much of the furniture and lighting himself, including the kitchen cabinets. He ingeniously included storage for platters and frying pans in the toe space under the kitchen cupboards. In the children’s bedrooms he designed walls that stack away, maximising the passage space by allowing it to form part of the bedrooms.

Rainwater harvesting for household use, grey-water recycling to irrigate the indigenous garden and photovoltaic panels are just some of the elements utilised. Most of these – and a wine cellar – are housed in the basement, which spans the entire footprint of the house. The house took nearly 10 years from planning to completion, during which time Friedrich experimented with a number of building methods and ended up doing much of the work himself. “Through the building and installing, I gained a lot of experience,” he says. “And in the end it really is everything we could have hoped for and more.”

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It may be on the wrong side of the tracks, but for Johan van Zyl and Peter van Noord this house in the Swartland village of Koringberg is home.

Johan says: “We met in the winter of 2005, the house on the corner and the two of us. It looked like a custard slice on the outside and a cross between an abandoned fireworks factory and a uterus on the inside, but we signed the offer to purchase anyway.

“‘We bought a weekend house,’ we told our friends in Stellenbosch and Cape Town, where we lived and worked, respectively, at the time. ‘What did you smoke/drink/pop/snort?’ they responded after they saw the horrible ‘happy’ snaps that had us gushing away like town-house trash about the ‘never-ending spaces’ that we were planning to ‘paint white from floor to ceiling’ to make them look even bigger. Plus knock out two walls built by the previous owners. Plus plant a garden where there were just two rusty old jalopies and a fig tree. Plus resign as soon as we could. Plus plant a vegetable garden and an olive grove…

“By April 2006 we had survived a builder who faked a brain tumour as excuse for running away with our money, we’d gone to court to recover an eight-door kitchen cupboard stolen from the garage, and we’d had to fend off an estate agent who wanted to get into the shower with us.

“In August 2010 we moved to Koringberg permanently.

“I now feel happy when I look at those old snaps when the house on the corner belonged to someone else… happy, because I don’t recognise anything.

“Still, it is a simple house with nothing fancy, like Koringberg is a simple village with nothing fancy. We come home and we know where we are, who we are. We know how we feel. We feel understood. Welcome. Home.”

Peter says: “Our house is right in the centre of Koringberg. When we stopped outside it for the first time, its location bothered us, tucked as it is between the main street and the railway line (with the house on the wrong side of the tracks), right across from the Spaza shop and the liquor store (the only businesses in town). Inside, however, the house turned on its charm: high ceilings, thick walls, large rooms. The location no longer mattered.

“The house has a colourful history. In its day it was a Jewish merchant’s shop and the place where farmers would bring their workers on Friday afternoons to get wine.

“It has also been home to some interesting characters, among them the sisters Sulene Steyn and the late Alida Jordaan who divided the house into two separate living areas – one of which Alida decorated with generous amounts of the brightest-of-bright glossy paint. Then, years ago, there was mal Elsie, who would sit on the porch and harass every passer-by for a candle and a packet of Marie biscuits. Apparently she had stacks of these.

“Today, it is the place where we live and work. Where we planted 180 olive trees and 20 fruit trees and 60 trees for shade and a lot of vegetable and flower beds. Where the cats have 8000m² to frolic (and where the mice live in fear). Where farmers drop in to have a coffee or a drink. Where friends love to visit.

“It’s as if I were there on that day in 1919 when the first clay bricks were laid. Because the Wit Huis op Koringberg (White House in Koringberg) has become the centre of my existence.” 

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