Red Chamber, one of Joburg’s best-loved Chinese restaurants, recently changed not only its address but also its entire image.

When Hyde Park Corner Shopping Centre decided on a revamp that would take its retail offering into international designer territory, they invited their older tenants to join them on a journey into serious luxury. One of those was the Red Chamber, the Chinese restaurant that had, for 18 happy years, served what many regard as Joburg’s finest Chinese food in a fairly traditional setting on the upper level opposite Luminance boutique.

In the changes at Hyde Park, Red Chamber moved downstairs into the entertainment zone, around the corner from the cinemas and with the opportunity to spill out into the corridor. The new restaurant is looking chic and slick, and still boasts one of the city’s most authentic Chinese menus.

Restaurateur Emma Chen, who moved to South Africa from Taiwan at the age of 22, says she had relished the opportunity to revamp the restaurant that she had started 26 years earlier. Together with her husband Colin Myburgh – and with a fair amount of brainstorming with close friend and VISI deputy editor Annemarie Meintjes – she decided on a direction that is more Manhattan than Mainland China. All the traditional Chinese elements are there, only updated for the sophisticated 21st-century palate, using broad strokes and bold lines.

Emma says the new look is the coming together of years of research she and her husband have done on their travels. “From Norway to Beijing, we have always kept an eye on modern restaurant design trends, and this is what we’ve brought to the Red Chamber’s new look.”

The lucky colour red features prominently in the Red Chamber’s new interior. Caesarstone Red Shimmer engineered stone cladding is wrapped around the entrance area and the reception zone. Oversized ancient jade-green wooden doors against one wall and solid brass panels against another give the glow that is another Chinese restaurant staple – only updated.

The lighting at the Red Chamber is provided by graphic light boxes and an organic grouping of pillow-shaped paper lanterns above the reception area.

“We wanted a modern version of the Chinese paper lantern and Annemarie found these in Europe for us,” says Emma. “They are just perfect.”

In the private dining room area, glowing green walls are a show-stopping design feature. Colin installed a massive LED system on the wall behind vivid images of green bamboo. Emma says this is also a nod to the restaurant’s previous incarnation: “We had the bamboo upstairs, but in a more traditional style. We wanted the element of classic bamboo in the new restaurant but gave it a modern twist.”

It’s a theme that runs through the entire new design of Red Chamber: A classic concept in a modern design language that has successfully avoided any gimmicks.

For more information, visit redchamber.co.za or contact 011 325 6048 or info@redchamber.co.za.

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Interior decorator Francois du Plessis took six years to turn this compact City Bowl Victorian into a white oasis with a heart of green.

How does an interior decorator, seduced daily by the latest products, furnishings, finishes and trends, decorate his own home? They say this is precisely why fashion designers wear black, so surely there must be an equivalent answer or decorators?

For Cape Town’s Francois du Plessis and his partner Graham Jones, the answer lay in a colourless palette with touches of timeless glamour – and plenty of patience.

Their home in Schotscheskloof, the little-known suburb perched on the slopes of Table Mountain between the Bo-Kaap and Tamboerskloof is, at first glance, a classic Victorian complete with wraparound stoep. But with Francois’ accomplished eye and Graham’s extraordinary green fingers, their six-year-long renovation has transformed the hippy terracotta house they found into something of a study in stately style. Plus, what has all the elements of a grand Victorian is in fact a compact and stylish town house. In Francois and Graham’s home, which has two bedrooms and bathrooms, the comfortable flow, lightness and touches of elegance are what contribute to the modest splendour that have become the Francois du Plessis signature.

On the mantelpiece in the dining room, a collection of simple glass vases with single green stems is what draws your eye. In Francois’ bathroom, the cosy alcove around the bath is dressed up with a gleaming silver-leafed mural by Julian and Ilaria of Paintiques. Francois and Graham’s favourite piece in the house is a faded gilt French dressing table with full-length mirrors on either side. These glamorous touches are not over the top, nor have they cost a fortune, yet they add up to an understated sophistication that sets this house apart.

Here, Francois has mastered the art of recycling pieces from clients, his own collection and from the existing house. In the renovation, doors that were removed from inside were repurposed as windows to Graham’s garden. Down the passage, a spectacular collection of art and photographs tells the story of Francois’ life in black-and-white symmetry – designer style with a sincere personal touch.

Francois says the most important part of the renovation was to introduce light into the house by making the doors to the exterior taller and using sandblasted white marble tiles from World of Marble and Granite on the floors of the passage and living area. Dover White Light (47-14P E7) from Plascon complements the effect on the walls.

Graham is the one behind the jungle-like garden, where there’s the feeling that more lies beyond the periphery if you care to explore. It’s a simple recipe: a mass of banana trees and elephant ears – all harvested from the previous garden – planted in front of a wall of “latte” with plenty of ground cover.

The garden room, or conservatory, off the kitchen is a delight – the essential informal kick-off-your-shoes-and-sip-a-gin kind of room that so many houses crave.

The final step that completed the renovation was the creation of a dramatically dark charcoal kitchen at the end of the white passage. The contrast is deliberate; the perfect elegant foil to the rest of the white house and an easy space for guests to chat around the table while Francois cooks.

Plascon’s Rhine Castle (GR-Y10) on the walls and kitchen tops covered in Maron brown marble from the Marble Gallery are the finishes that sealed the effect.

So that’s it then: fashion designers do black; decorators do white and light. Francois cheats slightly with the grey-and-black ikat-covered armchairs in the living room – but you know they won’t hang around for long in this light oasis of timeless style.

Francois du Plessis Interiors 021 461 1166, fdpinteriors.co.za
For more paint-related information and inspiration, visit plasconspaces.co.za

 

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Read in English.  

’n Kinderhuis in Midrand wat met 28 skeepsvraghouers gebou is, het nie net die lewe van die mense wat daar woon verander nie, maar ook die ingesteldheid van die ontwerpers daaragter. Dié storie oor ’n gemeenskap met gees en superkoel ontwerp het VISI se hart gesteel.

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Lees in Afrikaans.

This story of community spirit and some really cool design captured our hearts! An orphanage in Midrand, constructed using 28 shipping containers, has changed the lives of those who live in it – as well as those who created it. Boxing clever.

The newspaper cutting is carefully protected in a plastic sleeve. It is taken from the Midrand Reporter and shows the colourful splendour of the lego-like container structure  that is the new, New Jerusalem Children’s Home, situated on a smallholding between Johannesburg and Pretoria.

The young girl who lives there has pinned the picture above her bed and written proudly alongside the image: “My lovely home – a five star hotel.” It is an intimate glimpse into the immense impact that the remarkable house has had on the orphans and vulnerable children who moved in a few months ago.

New Jerusalem was started 12 years ago, when sisters Anna and Phina Mojapelo chose to do something about the desperate need in their surrounding community for shelter and protection for HIV orphans and other vulnerable children. An advocate and social worker respectively, they initially opened up their own homes to facilitate this, starting with just one child. Today they shelter over 80 children at a time. When it became apparent that they needed to create a bigger home for the children, they turned to their board for advice.

It was New Jerusalem volunteer and fundraiser Adrienne Feldner who initiated the concept of a container home. While the board needed some convincing regarding the idea, she made contact with American architect Adam Kalkin, who was immediately taken with the New Jerusalem project and flew out to South Africa to work with local architects Sean Wall and Mia Anfield. Major donations from the Dutch charity Orange Babies, Metair Investments and the Eskom Development Foundation made the construction possible.

That was only the beginning of the remarkable New Jerusalem story. Because, along with being a refuge for orphans, the home is also a remarkable case study of a green house that has been created by a supportive design and construction community.

South Africa’s most famous landscape architect Patrick Watson needed little convincing to take over the gardens, and some of the country’s leading decor and design suppliers have donated goods and services to make New Jerusalem a reality.

New Jerusalem has also installed photovoltaic panels that will enable them to take the house off the electrical grid. In essence, all that is still linking the house is the supply of municipal water and the removal of organic waste. “In time, we hope to delink these as well,” says Adrienne. “When funds become available we will reinstate the borehole and establish a worm farm.”

Funding for the PV panels came to New Jerusalem in a novel way. The Dutch division of European supermarket giant Lidl ran a campaign in which a percentage of every LED light bulb it sold in Holland went towards the solar installation at New Jerusalem. Working in collaboration with an organisation called “Do the Bright Thing”, Lidl were able to ensure that the energy used to produce the bulbs in Europe was offset by the energy saved at New Jerusalem.

It is but one story of many about the magic that has accompanied this home on its journey to reality.

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We featured Gavin Rooke’s Stand 47 – a prototype house for super green, super stylish living built on Monaghan Farm north of Johannesburg – in our May/June 2014 GREENOVATION issue of VISI.  Here is Gavin’s own house at Monaghan Farm, arguably the prototype for Stand 47, and inspired by the stripped-down architecture of the Case Study Houses in Los Angeles in the mid 20th century.

Imagine three narrow, white shoe boxes. Now position them to form the capital letter H and you’re starting to see how the new home of Gavin and Karin Rooke took shape.

Recently completed on the Monaghan Farm eco estate north of Johannesburg, the house was designed by Pretoria architect Karlien Thomashoff. Karlien worked closely with the owners who came to the project with one wish in mind: to build a South African interpretation of the legendary Los Angeles Case Study Houses of the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

Gavin Rooke had already designed two family homes himself, so gave the architect a very clear idea of what they wanted. Happily, the two parties saw eye-to-eye on several levels and, most importantly, shared an appreciation of the essence of Modernism – that the function of a house determines its aesthetic.

With architect and client sharing this knowledge of and appreciation for all aspects of Modernism (Karlien’s grandfather was the legendary Pretoria Modernist Philip Nel), it remained for the breathtaking views of the site, on a hillside of the farm, to act as the inspiration for a stripped-down style of architecture so rare on the South African landscape.

Both Karin and Gavin Rooke grew up in Modern homes in Pretoria so there was some nostalgia in their desire to create a Modernist lifestyle for their family of four.

The Case Study House that most inspired their new home was No 18, or Field House, designed by Craig Ellwood. Both houses are clean and simple glass boxes with a glamorous swimming pool dominating the front aspect of the home.

However, with the Rookes’ striking, charcoal slate floors, which flow throughout the house and straight onto the outside living area, their house is firmly rooted in South Africa.

Beams that extend from inside the house to outside, in a series of elegant legs, contribute to the sense that this house sits lightly on its Highveld hill and there is very little separating the interiors from the outdoors.

Once they had chosen the farm site for their house, they literally sat on the hill with three shoe boxes, working out which aspect would give their “Case Study” home the best view and light.

“It’s all about the view,” says Karin, who delights in demonstrating how one can stand outside one length of the H shape and look straight through the house to the other side.

Karlien refers to the house as a piece of “paper architecture” and a “non-roof” house, again emphasising the lightness of the home’s design.

What she calls a non-roof was not a simple procedure, the architect explains, and although you can hardly see it now, it was the trickiest part of the house to construct.

The house is built along a simple grid. One long length of the H shape houses three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dressing room and a study. All spaces are concealed behind sliding doors that are painted the same unique, grey-white colour as the unplastered walls – thus adding to the seamless flow of the house.

There are no window frames puncturing the glass walls, only louvre windows allowing limitless vistas.

Stripped-down architecture requires meticulous detail and Gavin points to this detail as “moments of sheer genius on behalf of the architect”. There are no skirting boards, carpet trims or even plaster, meaning there was no place to hide and all work had to be perfect.

The other long length of the H is where you’ll find the lounge and dining area, with both lengths opening from floor to ceiling to suck in the exceptional view. A long, welcoming kitchen connects the two lengths and invites visitors in at the front door.

Karin undertook the interiors of the home, working with members of Karlien’s team and Koop Design in Durban to create all the timber work. Almost all the other pieces are from Tonic, Eames or Jeremy Stephen Antiques.

It was important that all the furniture was conceptualised at the time that the house was designed, says Gavin. Nothing was bought after the house was completed.

“For this house to work, we had to know where every piece of furniture was going to go before the house was built.”

The Rookes deliberately avoided dramatic design statements, choosing only complimentary colours and textures that add to the calm flow of the house. Grey linen curtains hang quietly throughout the house. All the furniture is either wooden, grey, black or white and each piece carefully selected to fulfill its functional purpose.

Karin also focused meticulously on consistency: All the lights are black, for example. All the floors are charcoal grey. The only splash of colour is orange. “Repetition makes things easy on the eye,” she says.

Karin also wanted outdoor furniture that would be almost invisible. When she couldn’t find what she wanted, Karin literally drew up her own simple but striking designs with a black, fine-liner khoki and had them made.

A unique aesthetic collaboration between owners and architect, House Rooke is not only an accurate depiction of the Case Study style. It’s also proof that when knowledge and personal passion are made manifest, the result just works. 

Karlien Thomashoff, Thomashoff + Partner Architects, 012 341 4508 or karlien@thomashoffstudio.co.za

Read about Gavin’s even more eco Monaghan Farm prototype, Stand 47, in our May/June 2014 GREENOVATION issue of VISI.

See more Monaghan Farm homes here.

 

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Online Editor Carine Visagie interviews her on her future vision for the brand and what she loves about the magazine:

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The neutral tones of grey, brown and black in this Forest Town home speak of a new minimalism. The unobtrusive marble, glass and concrete rectangular forms were inspired by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion.

When Shaun Baker went to meet architect Bryan Dunstan of BD Studio to discuss plans for his new Forest Town home, he took with him a rectangular piece of grey stone. Its clean lines and neutral colour were to be the chief source of inspiration for the calm space that was subsequently created.

Shaun, one of three partners in the new Johannesburg-based fabric house George Baker, also brought with him a love for one of the most iconic buildings of the modern movement, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion.

The pavilion, with its low roof, luxurious marble and lengthening travertine tiles, was destroyed a year after it was built in the 1920s, but was rebuilt in the 1980s. Its elegant tranquility has been ascribed to its lavish use of marble and glass in exquisitely simple lines, with a glassy pond adding to the mood. 

A house that lives lightly

Bryan has successfully created a similar serenity in Shaun’s unobtrusive marble, glass and concrete home. In substance, the house is as compact as an apartment. But it lives lightly, with the rectangular living area sitting gently between a long black swimming pool and a peaceful fishpond. When the doors are open, this room has Barcelona written all over it – it’s as if the entire house becomes a cool verandah inviting the outside all the way in.

The Scic Italian kitchen is a cleverly concealed galley within this space and is another cool, unobtrusive area where everything is hidden behind clean white doors.

And while the living and dining furniture is minimal, the mood is a far cry from the harsh minimalism of the 1980s.

Shaun worked with Greenside interior design firm, Mezzanine, and has made extensive use of his own fabrics. There are soft laundered linens in shades of grey on the ottoman, couches and even the flop-down sofa out on the verandah, while two armchairs are covered in an Asian-inspired fabric by Jim Thompson – an international brand imported by T&Co and stocked by George Baker in Johannesburg. 

Fabric label launched

Shaun and his partner Mandy Griffiths have worked in the fabric industry for many years and launched George Baker Furnishing Fabrics and Wallcoverings in May 2010. It’s a brand they feel caters for a very specific need.

“There’s plenty of cheap fabric around, as well as some very expensive fabric. We have created something for the niche in between and the response has been fantastic,” says Mandy.

All the company’s fabrics are imported, but they carry the George Baker label – and South African pricing. The look and feel of the range is very much in keeping with the style of Shaun’s house: natural cottons, laundered linens and Italian cotton velvets in a neutral, low-sheen palette.

Authentic minimal style

These same muted tones are carried into the house’s bedrooms and bathrooms. Built onto the eastern side of the house, the two bedrooms sit on top of each other, with floating oak stairs leading the way up. Interior woodwork, done by Marcus Pieterse of Make, adds warmth among all the marble and glass.

The exterior walls are coated in a tyrolean cement finish that will weather naturally. “I wanted to allow the building to weather in a poetic way in order to tie it to the site,” says architect Bryan Dunstan, who also designed artist William Kentridge’s downtown studio.

The clean interiors of the building are made possible by an enormous, but invisible, storage area beneath it. The house is built over an old swimming pool – and Bryan suggested turning that entire excavated space into a basement, making it possible for Shaun to live in authentically minimal style.

George Baker 011 024 2747, 083 453 8788, www.georgebaker.co.za
BD Studio Architects 011 482 7942, www.bdsa.co.za
Make 011 614 9900, www.makefurniture.co.zaMezzanine 011 888 3986, www.mezzanineinteriors.co.za

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