Local architecture firm dhk has released its designs for a new residential development, consisting of elliptical towers of varying heights, to be built in Waterfall City, Gauteng.

This high-rise luxury apartment development, named Ellipse Waterfall, spans over 45 000 square-metres and is made up of more than 590 apartments and top-end amenities.

Clients Attacq and Tricolt gave dhk the brief to create a unique residential space comprised of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments, as well as penthouse suites.

dhk took a different approach to the conventional living space when creating the Ellipse. A fresh take on the regular rectangle apartment block makes room for panoramic views.

The four towers – Newton, Kepler, Da Vinci and Galileo – each sit on an elevated podium, allowing for a raised ground floor with a parking garage, a multi-concept lifestyle destination, swimming pools and parks.

Ellipse Waterfall also boasts chic contemporary interiors that put the user first, which were designed by dhk’s sister company dhk thinkspace.

“Our intention was to create spaces for dialogue and community involvement,” says Aram Lello, associate director at dhk and lead architect on the project. “We critically analysed the requirements of residents to design spaces responding to their needs – we wanted to create homes and a rich sense of community. The buildings embrace diversity through their unique design and the provision of great amenities.”

For more information, visit dhk.co.za.

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&Friends will host its much-anticipated second seasonal market on 4 November 2017 in Heidelberg, Gauteng.

From botanical floral arrangements and simple, rustic jewellery to hand-made pottery and wooden bowls, minimalist notebooks and stationery, modern knitting kits, gourmet desserts, Turkish cotton towels and trendy homeware items, this new market features a wide range of artisanal local designers and food stalls.

Stallholders will include names such as Henriette Botha, Pull The Wool, Dandy Pottery, Summah, Carry Ann Bags, Botanicus, The Frozen Foundry, Eat a Bit, Everyday Gourmet Goods, Kolmio Jewellery, Alexa Lily Shop and Swagger Collective.

The market will be held on 4 November 2017 at Poortjie Saal Venue & Guesthouse, Heidelberg, Gauteng. Entrance is free and the market will run from 8am until 3pm. For more information, visit &Friends on Facebook or follow the market on Instagram.

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From 1 October 2015 to 30 September 2016, restaurants and the Eat Out community were given a year to vote, review and rate their favourites.

Below are the winning eateries and their categories. Click here to see the winners for the Western Cape.

GAUTENG

Best African Eatery

Winner: La Terrasse (Menlo Park)

This Moroccan favourite is well known for their orange blossom cheesecake.

Best Asian Eatery

Winner: The Great Eastern Food Bar (Melville)

This Asian eatery is best known for their Korean fried chicken and delicious trout ceviche tacos.

Best Bistro

Winner: De Kloof Restaurant (Waterkloof)

This high-end bistro has a constantly changing menu and excellent service.

Highly commended: Black Bamboo (Menlyn)

Savanna Best Burger Eatery

Winner: Craft (Parkhurst)

Nothing beats a good burger. Plus, Craft whips up incredible milkshakes.

Highly commended: Rocomamas (Hazeldean)

Best Coffee Shop

Winner: Good Stuff Cafe (Maroelana)

An inventive menu with local twists and excellent coffee finds Good Stuff Cafe a firm favourite.

Best Italian Eatery

Winner: Cafe del Sol Botanico (Bryanston)

Be sure to book in advance for this Italian gem.

Highly commended: Cafe del Sol Classico (Randburg)

Best Mexican Eatery

Winner: Perron (Illovo)

Expect fresh and flavoursome tacos, with fast and friendly service.

Best Steakhouse

Highly commended: Che Argentine Grill (Maboneng Precinct)

Best Tapas Eatery

Winner: Culture Club – Bar de Tapas (Hazelwood)

Share small plates of awesome at this Hazelwood institution.

Highly commended: EB Social Kitchen and Bar (Hyde Park)

KWAZULU-NATAL

Best Bistro

Winner: Boiler Room Cafe (Berea)

This bright and cheerful bistro serves inspired brunch, lunch and dinner dishes.

Savanna Best Burger Eatery

Winner: Smokin’ Joe’s (Berea)

Burgers made from brioche buns and Karan beef make Smokin’ Joe’s a sure winner.

Best Country-Style Eatery

Winner: Oaklands Country Manor (Van Reenen)

Using fresh and local produce, this hotel has food to match their views.

Best Mexican Eatery

Winner: El Toro (Durban North)

Expect over 50 types of tequila, great poppers and mouthwatering churros.

Highly commended: Four15 (Durban North)

Best Seafood Eatery

Highly commended: Bel Punto (Umdloti)

Watching the waves while eating fresh seafood is a favourite pastime at this restaurant.

FREE STATE

Best Bistro

Winner: Pont de Val (Parys)

Offering an escape from the hustle. this restaurant offers a relaxed vibe and French bistro atmosphere.

MPUMALANGA

Best Coffee Shop

Winner: The Food Fundi (Nelspruit)

This cafe does all-day breakfasts, great lunch fare and great service.

Vote for your favourite to be in the running for next year’s Best Everyday Eateries awards – write a review here.

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Love or hate it, Johannesburg is our city of gold. Gifa has launched a series of educational city walks that explore the fascinating complexities of a thriving African metropolis.

As a city its equally loved and maligned, but regardless of which side of that line you stand there’s no doubt that it’s the vein of gold that runs beneath Johannesburg’s surface that belts out the steady beat of South Africa’s coursing economy. 

Gold was the grist that has fuelled the mill of entrepreneurs, business people immigrants and thieves that have coursed through the city over the 120 odd years of its existence. It’s been that way since the city’s inception in the late 1800s when it started out as a tent town, developed into a tin town and then grew higgledy-piggledy into the city we know today. In the early days, signs that hung from trader’s doors would not bemoan the heat but instead, be “closed on account of the dust”. 

What hasn’t changed much over the years is people’s ambivalence towards the city. However, from a locals perspective, Rian Malan probably summed it up best in his contribution to the collection of short stories From Joburg to Jozi: “Foreigners think we’re nuts, coming back to a doomed city on a damned continent, but there is something you don’t understand: it’s boring where you are.” 

Surprisingly then it’s when the city is at its quietest, on a Sunday, that it’s best to interpret the buzz of activity over the past century, which is literally preserved through its architecture and public art.  On Sunday 23 February 2013, the Gauteng Institute of Architecture (Gifa) launched a series of walks that aim to highlight the city’s development from a late Victorian and early Edwardian town to a neoclassical and early modern city, going on to a late modern and post-modern megalopolis to the current old and current new metropolis we find today.

Led by architect and academic Brian Altshuler the Past And Present Tour took in more than 50 notable sites, highlighting the mixture of old and new, wealthy and poor. With Brian at the helm, and two security guards trailing behind to keep an eye on cameras and gear, participants were free to snap away and interpret the clues to the development of the heart of Johannesburg. 

The tour ambled through the city’s various precincts from Newtown Cultural Precinct, which has been punted for years but is only really beginning to live up to its name now, through to the Mining Headquarters, which has a surprising number of historic mining gear on display as public sculpture, to the Public Precincts, from the original Market Square now called Beyers Naude, as well as Ghandi Square. Lunch was enjoyed from Roof of Africa, the 50th floor of the Carlton Centre, which takes in views of the entire city. The final stage of the walk passes through the vibrant Commercial Precinct and before heading back to Newtown. 

With the broad sweep of the city taken care of, the next tour will be more specialised and focus on the inner city. Scheduled for Saturday 9 March, for more information about the Joburg Inner City Tour and other upcoming tours contact Gifa on 011 403 0954 or email events@gifa.org.za.

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Design Team have come to Cape Town. Maciek Dubla chats to one half of the textile duo, Lise Butler, to find out what brings them to the Mother City and why so many have fallen in love with their hand-printed fabrics.  

In 2002, Amanda Haupt and Lise Butler, fresh out of Tshwane University of Technology registered DT Designs, a textile design business with a focus on designing and printing South African-inspired fabrics. A decade later and after resounding success in Pretoria, Design Team have now opened a showroom in the heart of Cape Town’s Fringe District. 

Another fabric house you say? Think again. Catching Lise just before Amanda and her hop on a plane for Europe to soak up a bit of inspiration for their winter collections, she explains the secret to the success Design Team continue to enjoy: “Each design we create has a story behind it, something that we have extracted from daily life because we believe you cannot create designs with integrity, without experience or knowledge of what you’re trying to convey.”

That human element of the personal story not only makes the fabrics good to look at it, but it differentiates Design Team from numerous generic fabric houses out there. Lise shares the example of their protea design from their Homegrown Collection to illustrate her point. Here, something so familiar to many South Africans and a symbol of the country, has been translated into a beautiful and simple print that resonates with anyone who lays their eyes on it, local or international. 

Besides the stories, each piece of fabric is printed using freehand silkscreen printing. Using this time-old method of fabric printing, Amanda and Lise have created numerous jobs by bringing in unskilled workers and training them up to produce these incredible textiles. Just in the last year, the Design Team printers have physically produced over 80 000m of fabric for clothing alone – that would be like running the Two Ocean’s half marathon nearly four times. 

So what brings Design Team to Cape Town? A creative spirit that Lise feels differs from that of Pretoria.  “While in Gauteng we are constantly focusing on business growth, dealing with enquiries and obsessing about products. When Amanda and I come to Cape Town once or twice a month, we feel we can get more in touch with the creative aspect, take a step back and engage with the community that we’re in.” 

Further, with Cape Town as World Design Capital 2014, they feel that opening a showroom in Cape Town at this time just felt right because they consider Design Team an intrinsically African textile brand. 

The fabric duo has a lot planned for Design Team this year. Fabric lovers can expect the launch of new and bigger ranges in March as well as the streamlining of their children’s collection, Silly Billy. Those in Kwazulu-Natal better start planning all their fabric needs (and wants) because next month will see the opening of Design Team’s Durban showroom. 

Before she heads off for their whirlwind European trip starting at Maison et Objet in Paris, I ask Lise whether she has a favourite pattern. She responds that with new designs continually created for a range of different products from scatter cushions to clothing and furniture, each design is a favourite for a month or two and then it’s onto the next. There’s simply never enough time to love just one. 

We think Design Teams fans will agree. 

Design Team, 59 Harrington Street, Zonnebloem, Cape Town, 021 462 7707, www.designteamfabrics.co.za

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Who doesn’t dream of living each day as if it was a holiday? Architect Thomas Gouws has designed a home where you will feel as if you are living in a five-star contemporary lodge.

It isn’t everyone’s privilege to build the house of their dreams. Most of us buy a previously owned home, make the structural changes we can afford and then set about perfecting our desired lifestyle with interior trimmings such as furniture and art.

But to stand on a piece of land, survey the landscape and view, and then dream up a house and build it – now that is a true luxury. When that piece of land is part of a visionary project to transform a piece of Gauteng into Highveld bushveld, well, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Inspired by the context

Pretoria architect Thomas Gouws says each building he designs is inspired almost entirely by its context and, in this case, the views. Nothing happens until he has stood on the ground where the house will stand and absorbed every aspect of the location.

This is exactly what happened at Serengeti, the Golf and Wildlife Estate 12kms northeast of OR Tambo International Airport, where Thomas was one of five leading Gauteng architects asked to design a show home to be displayed to the public when the estate went on sale. The other architects were Stauch Vorster (who designed two homes), Suzette Hammer of SBE Architects & Designers, Nico van der Meulen and Joehan Erasmus of Edmonds and Erasmus Design Consultancy.

Serengeti offers an enviable lifestyle, with 280 hectares of indigenous grasses, rehabilitated wetlands and a variety of buck and birdlife on your doorstep. This is no faux Tuscan monstrosity but an authentic nod to what Gauteng once looked like before the highways.

The estate includes an equestrian centre and 17kms of bridle paths through the conservation area. All this and the development’s proximity to the airport are attractions that are bound to make Serengeti popular among commuters who crave a real escape from the city when they get home.

Thomas’s brief was to create a home with a contemporary bush lodge atmosphere. He focused on the use of glass and stone to give the house an earthy feel, yet to open it up to the glorious bushveld surroundings. The resulting volume, the sheets of glass and the roof that seems to float in the sky at night would stop the average zebra dead in its tracks!

The site allocated for the house fans out towards the western horizon, so this is precisely the template Thomas used to design the double-storey home. The walls fan out from the point of entry, opening up the house to the expansive views. The lap pool is strategically placed as a focal point and is used to draw attention to the landscape beyond.

From the entrance foyer, the house splits in two with the left wing of the fan housing the living, entertaining and cooking area, and the right leading to the bedrooms. It is a neat categorisation that lends the house logic and simplicity.

Natural materials for an earthy look

In keeping with the bushveld theme, the home has been built using neutral-coloured materials, including stone, concrete, steel and timber. Paint finishes are all muted colours drawn from the natural surroundings. Madikwe slate was used for interior and exterior feature stone walls, while an Africote cement wash on the bedroom walls is warm and effective.

Throughout the house, Thomas has made use of large expanses of frameless glass to enhance the feeling of space and to give an uninterrupted view of the outside world. Even the pool “fence” is made of glass.

Two main bedrooms (the one upstairs mirrors another downstairs) share the living area’s dramatic view to the west, with over-sized sliding sunscreen shutters providing privacy and shade when required. Additional privacy is achieved by hidden automated block-out blinds (recessed in the ceilings). This allows for the best of both worlds: instantly transforming an open room with unrestricted views into a secluded retreat with the push of a button.

A pop of colour

All the earthy tones and wide open spaces could have become monotonous had Thomas not chosen to inject a sense of fun into the house with a bright red kitchen appearing to float in the centre of the living and entertaining area.

Designed by Thomas’ wife Sureen, who looks after the interior side of the business, the kitchen was manufactured by Lifestyle Projects with a red epoxy floor by Industrial Flooring Systems. The red touch pops up in the bathrooms too, where red tiled showers with red glass walls by Whipco are indulgent and sensual. Both showers in the main bedrooms lead outside, exactly as they should in any respectable bushveld lodge.

Sureen picked up on Thomas’s glass theme and used it in the bathrooms where 15mm glass slabs become simple yet sophisticated vanity tops.

Upstairs, the bathrooms and bedrooms link to a study, over a bridge through a forest of hanging light bulbs. Sureen was also responsible for furnishing the Serengeti show house and has used simple neutrals such as wood and white to complement the contemporary lodge feel.

Modern art by Pretoria artist Antoinette Uys includes a four-panelled sugar painting featuring hundreds of tiny hand-drawn ants. Her black-and-white paintings are hung throughout the house, adding to the modern bushveld mood.

Viewed from outside and in the evening, this house literally reaches for the stars, with the roof elevated from the walls through the use of glass windows beneath the eaves. It is a dream house for anyone wanting to live a sophisticated, African way of life.

Thomas Gouws Architects and Interiors 012 460 9867, tgarchitects.co.za

Serengeti Golf and Wildlife Estate 0861 396 396, serengeti.co.za

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