A creative couple decided to build a home that reflects their love of nature and the outdoors through its location, materials and size.

Married couple Lorien and David Byrne decided to downscale after the lockdown, realising that such a large space was unnecessary and expensive to maintain. “We had the vision to reduce the size of the property footprint and be closer to nature so we didn’t have to travel 30-45 minutes to be in the mountains or at the ocean. We wanted to simplify life, reduce all the maintenance, and increase time to be in nature and take long trips exploring the outdoors with our dog, Jack,” explains Video Editor, Lorien Byrne.

When looking for a new house, it took approximately a year for the couple to settle on a location, with deciding factors being proximity to nature, both sea and mountains, as well as traffic and distance into the city. After looking for a long time and not finding what they were searching for, they stumbled across a plot with a dishevelled wooden house. The sound of the sea, the abundance of trees and the fact that it is one house away from the river made them fall in love with the environment. This resulted in a collaboration project, resulting in Jack’s Treehouse, a minimal, contemporary eco-home that provides a sense of calm to its inhabitants.

READ MORE: Treehouse-inspired Constantia Home

“We had never intended to build, but now that we had this plot, David wanted to live in something unique. He came across Scandinavian eco-cabins and tiny homes. The concept of designing for function and form fascinated him. Minimal clean lines, uncluttered and modern but still warm and full of light,” Lorien elaborates. “After seeing some of his chosen references on Pinterest, my interest was piqued and we began choosing our favourite reference images on which to base our build. A friend recommended Simon Mountford from Kube Architecture based on the aesthetic vision we had. Simon invited us to his home, and we fell in love with the style. He was excited about working with us on this project and he and David aligned on the design and aesthetic.”

When asked about maintaining a minimal living space the couple explained that part of the complexity of living in a minimal, modern home is keeping to the theme. They constantly kept ruthlessly removing things that did not fit with the aesthetic. They also recommend ensuring every item you include has a reason to be there. “We decided to stick with the interior furnishings in wood, black, white and charcoal, reducing the colour palette, keeping the feeling earthy and industrial.”

Building a home from scratch while running a family and individual jobs is no easy task, so the couple enlisted Kennaird Barrett and Adam Hansen from KS Concepts for the project. The process came with both highs and lows for the couple. A top tip from David is to never build during lockdown, with one of the main challenges for the build being Covid. “Fortunately, we had a great team on our side. We presented the idea to Kennaird and he was excited but apprehensive. He knew we had a small budget and it was looking like a complex build,” explains David. “Covid caused a massive issue and we ended up paying a lot more for materials than we had hoped. Kennaird called us one day to say that the price of aluminium was going up 25% in the next week and we needed to put the money together for ALL the doors and windows ASAP.”

The home puts a large emphasis on natural light and indoor/outdoor flow. Simon Mountford and Keagan van Rooyen from Kube had the idea to have the view extend all the way through the house by aligning the bedroom entrances and exits, with the balcony and stacking doors. The indoor/outdoor flow and the pitched roof maximise the view of the mountains on both sides of the property. Natural wood and stone are accentuated alongside the contrast of black modern features. The house is mainly built out of wood to keep with the Scandinavian look and feel. They wanted an interior pine-cladded finish but changed their minds when the engineers recommended the OSB for structural integrity. The architect said that the OSB could be a great overall finish for the interior instead of the pine cladding on the walls and ISO board on the ceilings.

“Building a house is not for the faint-hearted,” says Lorien. “It comes with massive complexity and mountains of small details that need to be thought out. Without the right team helping us problem solve, it could have been an absolute nightmare. The success of our outcome is so heavily weighted on who we hired to do the architecture and the build. Simon and Kennaird really made our dream a reality.” 

The team has recently listed ‘Jack’s Treehouse’ with the location agency Amazing Spaces – where it can be hired for both local and international film and magazine shoots.

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The post Hout Bay Treehouse appeared first on Visi.

The Cape Town home of this creative clan is as much a blank canvas for their unstoppable combined creativity as it is a family space filled with love, laughter and parody.

The Hout Bay home that creative director, interior designer and curator Tracy Lynch and husband Frank van Reenen (the equally off-the-charts artist, sculptor and animator) share with their teenage daughter Franny perfectly expresses their unique view on the world. As founder of Studio Lee Lynch and the creative director of Nando’s Design Programme, much of Tracy’s is work is about reinvention; Frank’s is also inventive, but with a side order of dark, playful and wacky.

Three years ago, when they decided to swap their inner-city Victorian home in Cape Town for a spacious out-of-towner, they were looking for a well-designed space they could move into immediately. “A new, modern space is contrary to anything we’d ever lived in before, but as my days are creatively charged, I was hankering after something calm, structured and resolved,” says Tracy. But that never happened. Not long into the house-hunting process, they fell in love with – and bought – a garden… with peacocks, a vineyard and a garden cottage as part of the package.

READ MORE: Linksfield Ridge Home

With a flourish of faux architectural features and a decidedly olde-worlde feel to it, the existing house may have been the antithesis of what they were looking for, but it did have one thing going for it: potential. “I could see the house had good bones,” says Tracy. “So I really just removed a lifetime of accumulated details and decoration that felt out of place.” Once Tracy had pulled up the wall-to-wall carpets to reveal parquet floors, and removed the Corinthian columns and a heavy stone fireplace, the house felt a lot more streamlined and spacious. “We also ripped out the melamine kitchen and replaced it with simple white tiles and utilitarian units that probably reveal more than we’d care to admit about the amount of cooking that goes on in here,” says Frank. “Then we decided to paint everything white and live in the space for a year to get a feel for it,” adds Tracy.

Laid out on one level, the house has distinct public and private areas connected via a wooden walkway. The split level living space comprising the living room, kitchen and dining area are generous, and benefit from a pitched roof that not only gives a sense of volume but also – thanks to clerestory windows at the apex of the roof – fills the space with light. A wood- and glass-panelled walkway leading from the living areas delivers you to the bedrooms, where the main suite, Franny’s bedroom and a guest suite are located.

READ MORE: Salt Rock Home

“It took me a while to figure out what to do here, says Tracy. “Initially I tried to apply some of my learnings from living in Victorian houses for years – such as white walls and wooden floors – but nothing seemed to work. It was only when I realised the living areas are experienced through the windows that I began to play with colour-blocking the walls in green to blur the barriers between indoors and out.” Her decision to frame the greenery with black doors and windows was genius – it transformed the space. “I had to come back to why we bought the property in the first place. Once we reconnected with the excitement around the garden becoming a sculpture garden for Frank’s work and a wild space for Franny’s imaginings, it all clicked into place.”

READ MORE: The Boat House

Much like the garden’s seasonal displays, Tracy’s penchant for reinvention means the interiors change constantly too. “You’ll seldom come here and see it looking the same,” she says. “It’s a lifestyle thing for me. I have spent my life creating homes, both personally and professionally. Making changes, however small, shifts the energy of a place. It’s what I like to do. I’d go so far as to say that I would choose restyling my home as a form of recreation any day of the week.”

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When a New York couple opted to build a home in Cape Town, they honoured its location by furnishing it with pieces by some of South Africa’s most renowned artists.

It was 13 years ago in 2007, that New Yorkers Jim Brett and Ed Gray were first enchanted by Cape Town. At the time, Jim was Head of Home at leading US retailer Anthropologie and was on a buying trip to South Africa with local design promoter and exporter Trevyn McGowan of The Guild Group. The three of them embarked on a trip cross-country, visiting the studios of artisans and designers, and formed an immediate bond. “I had never met anyone who could match my passion for handicraft and design,” Jim says of Trevyn.

“As we travelled to South Africa more often, we fell in love with the country, specifically Cape Town and its environs,” Ed says. So, it came as no surprise to family and friends when he and Jim decided to build a home for themselves in Hout Bay, just 30 minutes from Cape Town’s city centre, in which they hope to eventually spend six months of the year. Enlisting the help of Trevyn and her husband and business partner Julian, it was only natural that they would continue their trajectory of working with local designers, furnishing the home with pieces by some of the country’s most prominent names.

For the new build, the couple briefed architect Francois Swart of PADIA, requesting barn-like structures that suited the expansive property, on which they also have a guesthouse. Pitched roofs, a silo structure, and a variety of window shapes brought this vision to the fore. “As a reference to the informal way sheds grow into existence, there is a certain charm in the creative use and placing of windows,” says Francois, explaining the forms that are stackable and hidden in places, lowered for framed views in other instances, or inserted flush against walls in corners in order to allow light to flood in unobstructed. “The ‘journey’, surrounded by nature, can be experienced open or closed, and doubles as a pause area that can be used as a sunroom or gateway to the pool garden,” says Francois of the thoroughfare that offers glimpses of the furnishings beyond.

“It’s really enjoyable creating a world for people you care about,” says Trevyn of the project that has dressed the home in pieces by the likes of Gregor Jenkin, Charles Haupt and Laurie Wiid van Heerden, designers represented by the McGowans’ collectible design gallery, Southern Guild. “It’s a beautiful homage for the work we all continue to do for South African design,” she says of the result.

The newness of the home and its interiors paint a fresh African story for the US couple. “It’s important to us that our home feels warm and welcoming, with a degree of humility,” says Jim. Their modus operandi in eliciting the desired warmth was a crafted use of colour. An abstract artwork by John Murray mounted above the dining room cabinet – where striking tones mix with neutral hues – informed the colour choices for sofas, walls and decorative objects.

As with the varying patterns in John Murray’s painting, a myriad forms exist in the home – from tapered pot plants and circular nesting tables to curvaceous dining chairs and elliptical sideboards. “There are very few hard corners on the furniture items,” Jim explains of their brief. “Ovals, circles, or rectangles with rounded corners… it’s very subtle details that add a softness to the experience.” Equally considered is the collection of ceramic vessels. “I’m a bit of a ceramics junkie – I just can’t seem to stop buying them,” says Jim. It’s a passion he and Trevyn have shared since the start of their friendship, which made it easy for her to suggest new pieces by Andile Dyalvane, Zizipho Poswa, Anthony Shapiro, John Bauer, Madoda Fani and Chuma Maweni for the home.

What began as a professional exploration between Jim and Trevyn over a decade ago has resulted in a very personal celebration of South African design. “We still manage to inspire each other,” Jim smiles, gesturing around the home that proves his point.

Looking for more architectural inspiration? Take a look at the colourful, bold contemporary Johannesburg home.

The post Hout Bay Home appeared first on Visi.

A recently completed family home on an estate in Hout Bay, Cape Town, needed some finishing touches and to make the most of some underutilised spaces. 

Architect and designer Hanno de Swardt of Onnah Design worked on the revamp, which took approximately three months, of the lounge, guest bathroom (or powder room) and main bedroom, the conversion of the wine tasting room into a family TV lounge, the creation of a kid’s TV lounge upstairs, and the addition of a built-in daybed on the upstairs balcony. “The general brief,” says Hanno, “was to look at all of the spaces – the layouts, furniture, wall and window treatments – and make improvements to suit the client’s laid-back family orientated lifestyle.”

The powder room, which is off the entrance hall, now makes the desired first impression with bold black and gold wallpaper from Hertex and the ceiling painted black. Another room off the entrance hall that previously had no purpose is now the dedicated TV room featuring a large timber table with benches, a sofa from Klooftique and armchair from Sofaworx. The oak display unit from Instyle Creations now frames the cavity sliding door, which leads out to the garden and beautiful views of Hout Bay beach and the harbour beyond. “Dark walls and roller blinds enhances the room’s function,” explains Hanno, “with the black TV fading away into its own dark wall recess.”

After: The oak display unit is by Instyle Creations.

The main living room terminated in a lounge area that was centred around a large TV – “a rather missed opportunity,” says Hanno. The TV made way for a floating bench, also by Instyle Creations, for either seating and display. A vintage sofa received a new lease on life from Bespoke Living with a paint and new upholstery and gives a subtly eclectic feel when combined with the new sofa from Sofaworx, with LIM console behind it.

Upstairs, the main bedroom’s makeover came courtesy of abstract landscape wallpaper from Cara Saven and nightstands from Loft Living. An intimate space for reading or relaxation was also created with armchairs from Sofaworx. Also upstairs, an open space between the children’s bedroom was transformed into a kid’s TV room and playroom. A banquette corner unit, by Instyle Creations, maximises the space with drawers and mobile storage baskets below.

Finally, the upstairs patio was enhanced by the introduction of a large raised daybed from Carpentry Creations with a display shelf for some greenery. “Now my clients can chill in the sun in comfort and style while taking in that spectacular view of the Hout Bay Harbour,” says Hanno. “Throughout my goal was to turn negative space into positive, functional space that now contributes to a more meaningful whole.”

For more inspiring before and afters, click here.

The post Before and After: Hout Bay Home appeared first on Visi.

Karen Roos of Babylonstoren calls it her favourite house in South Africa. It is without a doubt one of the most remarkable houses in the world. Step into Blackwood Lodge, and down the rabbit hole we go.

Keith Rose is fixing his thatch. And while he is at it he is taking the opportunity to build a courtyard, remodel two rooms and extend the gym. And he has been at it, on and off, for the past 25 years. From the main living area – with its cavernous fireplace and Great Zimbabwe-style sandstone walls, each rough-hewn piece layered upon the next to create a swirling fingerprint of some recently remembered mountain god – Keith leads me onto a landing that opens onto a balcony. Succulents wink from a corner as I follow him across a gangplank to a parapet with a view over the Hout Bay valley that makes me grip the wooden railing hard.

Below us is an enormous L-shaped pool strung with a variety of obstacles and toys: a long slide, rope ladder, balancing beam, monkey bars, floating polo nets, wooden islands. There’s even a zip-line. For the next hour I stumble behind Keith as he winds his way through this labyrinthine Neverland. Down spiral staircases into secret rooms that open onto even deeper chambers where koi fish swim past you in their green waterwall worlds. Up and out and around a dizzying network of terraced galleries and verandas. Medieval bathrooms. Magical wine cellars. Mystical gardens of water and stone.

The furniture is in storage for the renovations, but each corner has a story, and each beam shares its own private joke. We unbolt countless wrought-iron gates forged by artist and blacksmith Luke Atkinson, and ornate doors designed by artist and blacksmith Conrad Hicks. The kids wanted some thing more modern, Keith tells me, so now he’s creating an industrial feel in two of the rooms, with hand polished steel beams and grated ceilings. Enormous metal sliding doors straight out of David Lynch’s Dune are stacked outside the gym.

“How many rooms do you have exactly?” I gasp as we exit the 400 m² garage, which can accommodate 17 cars.

“I don’t know,“ Keith says, grinning. The house was a modest prefab cabin in a bluegum forest when Keith and his wife Marie-Louise moved to Hout Bay 25 years ago. Since then they have been perpetually adding, extending and creating it. It’s difficult to get a single answer regarding the duration of the building time, in total.

“Oh, six or seven years”, he says at first. Then later, “15”. But eventually it ceases to matter. I try to grill Keith on whether the constant change has been disruptive. Does the hobby verge on an obsession?

“What do you get out of it?” I ask.

“You mean apart from driving my family crazy?” He laughs. “No, look, I do enjoy building, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of the comfort of your family.”

The house is an impish living monument to its owner’s volcanic energy and creative drive. Keith Rose is the most successful ad director in the history of South Africa. But it is also an extension of the terrain. Keith points at the huge sandstone boulders in the courtyard that is under construction – those rocks were harvested from the hillside that needed to be levelled. “It’s a natural evolution,” he says.

“If this house were elsewhere, I’d have used a different structure and materials. The environment and lie of the land created this as much as I did. It’s a giant tree house, really.” The aesthetic reflects this organic unfolding. There are few straight lines. It’s all curves and spirals and arches. An eternally emerging superhuman habitat. It’s Gaudí meets Gormenghast.

“Do you think you’ll ever finish it?” I ask him on my way out.

“Ha-ha. Ja, no well, ah, um…” he trails off. I take it as a no.

VISI was privileged to be the first and only team to photograph Blackwood Lodge, Keith Rose’s final production. He was a true original, a talented, versatile and creative genius. Rest in peace Keith, we salute your unique vision.

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Dieter Losskarn’s sprawling house on the slopes above Hout Bay harbour is a motor enthusiast’s dream.

Of course, there is a front door, but Dieter prefers to use his four-car garage to usher in guests. Little wonder, really, because his singular passion in life is motorcars, and the Checker taxicab that enjoys pride of place in the garage, all sunshine yellow paintwork and shiny chrome, sets the tone for what’s to come.

Obsessed with wheels since the age of 11 – when he first laid eyes on a yellow taxicab in a movie and vowed that one day he would have one – Dieter is palpably excited when he talks about the car. “This cab is the one from the movie Carlito’s Way,” he says, referring to the 1993 Al Pacino thriller set in New York. This garage is no cluttered storage space of junk and tools. It is a room where Dieter spends time playing music and chilling out.

The garage-cum-lounge sets the style tone for the rest of the house. High-gloss polyurethane floors reminiscent of those in fancy car workshops – in a shade Dieter calls crème brûlée – feature throughout the house, from the garage to the open-plan bedroom and bathroom on the top floor, with enviable views across the bay.

Dieter’s home is a repository of “rustworthy” objects, from old enamel advertising and street signs collected on his travels through Africa, Germany and beyond, to oil tins and petrol pumps. Even the interior doors were left outside to weather and rust, and only once Dieter was satisfied with their look did he hang them in their frames. True to the warehouse theme, the upstairs living areas are warmed by pops of colourful paintwork and the use of decorative elements like Nguni hide rugs.

Dieter’s narrative continues in his scrubby coastal garden, where, sandblasted by the elements, stands the remains of a 1960s Mercedes-Benz 200SE. “I used to smoke fish in it,” says Dieter, “until the southeaster blew the bonnet clean off; now it’s my braai.” Next to the driveway is the remains of a Chevy bakkie. Its presence may be inspired by the vintage car wrecks in the Namib Desert, but again Dieter has put it to good use: it serves as a garden shed.

Pretty much the architect and interior designer of the space, Dieter only called in the experts to bring his detailed sketches to life. “I wanted my home to reflect my personality and the things that matter to me,” he says. The result is an open-plan industrial-stylespace with an abundance of raw steel and traditionally masculine touches, a dwelling that has been designed to maximise the expansive views across the bay and serve as a gallery for Dieter’s collection of curiosities… especially the enamel signage.

“The signs are souvenirs from my travels, which makes them something of a memoir for me. They tell my story,” he says.

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A secluded Hout Bay home gets a contemporary transformation when the architect, furniture designer and client’s visions align.

Much like the winding, tree-lined road you travel up to reach this private Atlantic Seaboard home in a quiet cul-de-sac, your access into the property itself is gradual. Leaving the garden to come indoors happens gently, offering glimpses of the interior as you follow the meandering path hugged by rocks and trailing indigenous plants to the front door and glass-box entrance hall. Step inside and you still remain connected to the garden.

From the hallway, a partition wall conceals the next layer. Look left, and glimpse a passage and stairs descending; look right, and there is the garden again, framed in a floor-to-ceiling window.

Behind the partition wall, the kitchen, dining room, lounge and outside entertainment area unfold. You may be inside now, but the lightness created by the all-white double-volume space brings the landscape inside. Even here, in the centre of the house, the transition from inside to outside is seamless.

The flow is no accident. For the renovation, architect Bert Pepler’s challenge was not only to modernise and update a house that had been built almost three decades before, but also to reconnect its core features: to develop the entrance; reimagine the master bedroom at the end of the passage; integrate the separate kitchen, living and entertainment areas; and make more of the incredible surrounding landscape and rambling garden.

“Cosmetically, the brief to bring the house into the 21st century meant removing elements that dated the house,” says Bert. “On a larger scale, the challenge was to extend, enlarge and open up the living areas to the beautiful view and to create a magnificent outdoor space that celebrates it.” One could argue that the success of the transformation lies in the elements that unify, the most significant being the shutters used on every sliding patio door and window. They are both aesthetically and practically integral to the design, successfully tying the exterior elevations together and updating the overall composition. “They provide security, shade and privacy, and define and enclose the outdoor entertainment room off the lounge – a covered terrace that floats above the fynbos garden,” says Bert. When they’re closed you can still glimpse the landscape beyond, and the strips of green and linear shadows add texture.

The white exposed timber beams of the living area are echoed in the master bedroom with its matching lofty triangular window. The L-shapes of the patio and outdoor benches are mirrored in the L-shaped glass window seat in the master bedroom, which looks out over the bay. Once again, whether the bedroom is enclosed by the shutters or opened to connect to the outdoors, the landscape is a fundamental element.

“The restraint in the selection of materials, textures, artworks and furniture combined with the aspect and position of the house make it exceptional,” says furniture designer Piers Mansfield-Scaddan, who collaborated with the client on the interiors. “Everything in the house is bespoke. The client has an incredible eye, and we share a fascination with British architect John Pawson for his inherent simplicity and uncomplicated design, so that was the starting point for the conversation.”

The brief was for a clutter-free, simple home. This has been achieved by means of a cold-white backdrop that accents a restrained palette and subtle textures. It allows each bespoke piece to stand out and not compete with one another.

The understated furnishings match the structural geometry of features like the linear shutters, L-shaped deck and rectangular rim-flow pool. As a result the house is the perfect counterpoint to the lush natural landscape that surrounds and permeates it.

The post Contemporary Hout Bay Home appeared first on Visi.

In the Greenovation edition of VISI, we featured four low-cost housing solutions, including the Light House that impressed us so much we went around for a visit that resulted in a thought-provoking conversation about how co-design can help shift the traditional role of saviour and victim in the rollout of housing. 

Xoma Ayob has been living on a piece of land perched above the Hout Bay harbour in Hangberg for more than 30 years.

Here he not only built himself a house but also a livelihood: he tends a menagerie of livestock and birds, and grows both vegetables for the food and medicinal herbs that he sells. He also grows indigenous trees from seed and plants them in the area.

In 2013 the City of Cape Town approached him and his neighbours to move them to a Temporary Relocation Area (TRA) in order for a housing development to happen on the land that they were living on. Most of Xoma’s neighbours opted for the “dark tin boxes” as he calls them.

“I have been comfortable here,” says Xoma. “It was not easy for me to leave this area after everything that I have done. I am surrounded by stuff that I have been keeping myself busy with, that helps me to prosper. So I resisted.”

For Xoma a TRA house was simply not a viable option. He did not see the sense in giving up his home and the garden and livestock that sustained him, nor the view that he has relished for more than three decades to be relocated to a “camp” of generic boxes. He refused to move and became a stumbling block to the development and thorn in the side of the City of Cape Town.

His refusal to move from the land that he had been occupying for the past 30 years inadvertently set in motion a co-design process that resulted in a moving case study of what can happen when design becomes a dialogue between equals. 

In an attempt to sweeten the deal for Xoma a city representative contacted Stephen Lamb and Andrew Lord, who have been long-time advocates for fire- and flood-proofing temporary houses in informal settlements and creating food security through vertical gardening to create one of his signature green walls for Xoma’s TRA house. 

Instead of taking a brief from the city, Stephen and Andrew approached the situation more as an active listener than a service provider.  

“When I met Xoma for the first time I told him what I was being asked to do and I also told him that I did not have an agenda. I asked him to tell me his side of the story and we got to talking,” Stephen recalls.   

“When I first met Stephen he told me that he was here to listen to my needs and that made me feel like I could work with him. Because he wasn’t going to tell me that I should lay here, sit here and do this, this way or that, that way. He came to listen to me,” Xoma recalls. 

After a week of conversation they had an idea and went back to the city with the request that the city should give them a new site and the same amount of money that they would have spent on the TRA house and let Xoma design something that he did want to move into.

“This is where it becomes really interesting – how can design change our notion of poverty or how we interpret poverty and how can it help in our approach to breaking the cycles of poverty and misery?” ponders Stephen.

The city agreed and gave Xoma a new site and the TRA budget of R50 000. Xoma, assisted by Stephen and Andrew, designed a double storey house that incorporated the principles of flood and fireproofing as well as a green wall on the one side. The plan includes an open-plan living space, toilet and shower and mezzanine bedroom. The structure is built on gum pole stilts and pre-manufactured panels made up of corrugated iron, insulation and interior cladding were produced off-site and assembled onsite.   

When they presented the design to the city, the city insisted that it should also be compliant to the national building regulations and the design was put through a rigorous approvals progress that checked structural and public safety as well as lighting and ventilation, drainage and fire protection and energy efficiency.

“What actually happened was he gave the city something that blows them away – he was suppose to take a number and stand in line to get what he is given,” Stephen points out. “Instead now you have something that is co-designed, that is compliant to regulations, that looks beautiful, that is sensitive politically and socially, that is not just a product but a celebration of a process. This is what can happen when design is a dialogue of equals not a competition between privileged, professionals.”

Stephen wholeheartedly believes that human-centred design can actively subvert the stereotypical roles of victim and saviour by putting the role of saviour squarely in the hands of the victim. So instead of government, people are able to do it for themselves that could result in real broad change.  

The design is purposefully simple to assemble onsite. The foundation footings and columns are prepared on site while the wall and roof panels are built in a workshop. Once the foundation and panels are ready, it is assembled. The idea is that beneficiary communities can be employed by government to build their own structure.

“So it is not just about building houses it is about building people too,” says Stephen. 

With the help of a community of people that rallied behind the project, the house went up in just three days. 

Xoma decided to make the plans for his fully compliant “Light House” open source so that anyone could have access to them.

“I designed this so that anyone can have a copy. I want the government to take these cottages and build these for the ‘mense’. It is eco-friendly and it is flood and fire resistant. This design of ours is for everyone. When you live in a place like this, you feel like you can now help the next person,” Xoma concludes.  

Read our article about Stephen Lamb and Andrew Lord’s edible shack here.

touchingtheearthlightly.com

Touching the Earth Lightly would like to give a specials thanks to all those who assisted in the project development and building of the Light House, in their various ways and capacities (in no specific order or preference) below: Lindsay Bush, Conrad Hicks, Helen Abrahams, Fiona Jonkers, Ian Upton, Belinda Taal, Bruce Snaddon, Katrin Hensel, Anja Letchle, Geraint Piercey, Craig Pickard, Francois De Flamingh, Wally Peterson, The Pole Yard, Andy Jones, Jonah De Lange, Giles Ridley, James Dee, Chief !Xam Korana, !Xoma Ayob, Jo-Jo tanks, Reliance Composting, Cape Town Partnership, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), City of Cape Town, Sculpt the Future Foundation, Kommetjie Environmental Action Group, Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC), Informal Settlement Network (ISN)

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