COMPLIED BY Gina Dionisio PHOTOS Niel Vosloo (Robertson Cottage); Elsa Young (Scarborough House, Umdloti home, Greenside Home, Malmesbury Home, Johannesburg Home Pniel Farmhouse, Witklipfontein Eco Lodge, Eclectic Hout Bay Home); Dook (Monaghan Farm House, Keurboomstrand Home, Montagu Home, Modern Pretoria Home, Minimalist Joburg Home, Oudtshoorn Heritage Home); Greg Cox (Steenberg Home, Modular Scarborough House, Nieu-Bethesda Home, Modern Hout Bay Home, Lanseria Estate Home); Nicolas Mathéus (Menorcan Home, Provence Farmhouse); Paris Brummer (Franschhoek Home, Kerala Estate Cottage); Warren Heath (Klein Karoo Home); Lar Glutz (Salt Rock Home)

Whether nestled among indigenous plants or surrounded by centuries-old trees, these homes invite you to escape the everyday and immerse yourself in a world of natural beauty. These houses from the VISI archives showcase the timeless allure of a gorgeous garden.

Robertson Cottage

For three years, Etienne Hanekom drove past a derelict 150-year-old cottage on his way to his grand old Victorian in Robertson, without noticing the nondescript ochre building. Then, one day, a friend told him that a small cottage near his house was for sale. Upon finally noticing it and entering it for the first time, Etienne instantly fell for both its dimensions and the price.

“It was a forgettable, run-down, sad little house,” Etienne says. “A long, narrow house built of clay with four windows and a front door. Yet I walked in and knew I wanted it. The house had a certain atmosphere that I liked, a feeling that resonated with me.”

There is always a house that winds its way into Etienne’s heart. These are his personal projects. And they are always very personal, even when they’re not meant to be.

As he began to transform the dilapidated cottage, Etienne fell more for it. He mostly works with large spaces, but he has a particular fondness for small ones. By the time he had completed the pink vaulted bathroom, he had sold his much larger Victorian house down the road and was making plans to move into the narrow little cottage.

Read the full story on this Robertson Cottage.

Scarborough House

“I thought I was a city girl – until I spent lockdown in Scarborough,” says South African film director Nicole Ackermann. That this small coastal village just outside Cape Point Nature Reserve in Cape Town is now her home was as much a surprise to her as it was to her family and friends. A place of wild winds and brutally cold water, its untamed beauty is not for everyone – yet it struck a chord with the globe-trotting Nicole the moment she arrived. “My time here changed my outlook and values significantly. Up until then, I was more outwardly seeking for inspiration; now I realise the value of looking inwards more.”

When the world returned to “normal”, Nicole found herself back in Los Angeles for work, but regularly trawling property websites in the hopes of finding a home in Scarborough. “It was quite a revelation that, although living here wasn’t necessarily what I had envisaged for myself, it was what I desperately craved.” So when this house came up for sale, her family were sent to check it out. “I remember my sister sending me a video that she took outside the back kitchen door,” says Nicole with a smile. “Hearing the cicadas and the sound of the ocean made me incredibly emotional; it was like a homecoming. Just like that, it was a done deal – I literally bought it unseen.”

Read the full story on this Scarborough house.

Umdloti House

It was a serendipitous Sunday drive that delivered the current owners to this prime property in Umdloti. They were met by spectacular views out towards the local surf break, and a 400-year-old milkwood standing sentinel in the front garden. “We had been thinking about buying a home in Umdloti for a while, so to happen upon this place without trying too hard felt like the realisation of a dream,” they say.

Although the couple live full time on a farm on the North Coast, the family have a long association with Umdloti, dating back to the early 1900s, when a great-grandfather lived there.“ We have great memories of the times we spent here over the years, and we wanted to emulate that with our own children,” say the owners. “The original house was tucked away behind such an overgrown garden that you couldn’t see the sea, and you had to fight your way through an impenetrable banana plantation to get to the milkwood,” they add.

Read the full story on this Umdloti house.

Monaghan Farm House

This house in Monaghan Farm in Lanseria, on a beautiful spot overlooking a bend in the Jukskei River, began with a bold, Brutalist architectural idea – but the result is an incredibly subtle, sensitive response to its setting. The owners, Wendy and Lukas van Niekerk wanted a home made entirely of steel and raw, exposed concrete, and this spectacular plot of land offered them the chance to build from scratch. Lukas, an engineer, is a huge fan of the work of 20th-century Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, who is famous for his sensitive use of concrete as well as experiments with concrete and steel – and the Van Niekerks’ architect, Enrico Daffonchio, went to school in Scarpa’s hometown of Venice in Italy. The fates had aligned.

Despite what Enrico refers to as its “strong architectural language”, the house they designed together is nestled into the landscape and, when viewed from higher up the hill, is practically invisible (helped by the green roofs planted with endemic grasses to recreate the landscape it’s built on). It is, quite literally, sunken into the landscape to keep its presence unobtrusive.

You descend from street level to the front door via steps that lead to a path through a courtyard. The bold simplicity of the forms – the slim, straight lines of the roof and overhangs – belie the complexity of the way the house is knitted into its setting, with courtyards and “green fingers” all around bringing the landscape and vegetation up to and between the rooms.

Read the full story on this Monaghan Farm house.

Steenberg Home

There are houses in beautiful settings that try to disappear into the landscape. Others like to perch on a prominent spot and lord over all they survey. This one – a holiday home on a big semi-rural plot on the side of the Steenberg mountains in Cape Town – does neither. Its weighty walls and solid masses seem to emerge from the ground and assert themselves unapologetically on the mountainside, yet the indigenous gardens around its edges blend with the natural fynbos, so it looks as if it is being reclaimed by nature. It is undeniably there, but somehow doesn’t seem like an imposition.

Parts of it form big, monolithic blocks, and others are almost pavilion-like – glass-sided, so you can see all the way through the house from one end to the other – but even they have heavy-looking roofs. An oversailing canopy seems to rest on one section but float above another, overlapping. In many ways, the house has no obvious “face”. It twists around, without a clear front or back. It’s a house that, from the moment you see it, prompts questions. Why does it have those angles? Why doesn’t the floating roof touch the roof below? Why is it even oversailing? But that’s the point. “It’s a bit of a mystery,” says its architect, Chris van Niekerk. There’s a randomness about the way parts of the house have been assembled, intuitively, “like a child playing with blocks”. It has a pleasing, comfortable composition, but it doesn’t explain itself or seem to comply with any rigid and ordered logic.

Read the full story on this Steenberg home.

Menorcan Home

Location, they say, is everything – and “they” would certainly give this one the thumbs-up. With the sea on the horizon, and framed by dry-stone walls softened by pines, olive trees and palms, this idyllic four-hectare estate is situated on Menorca – one of Spain’s Balearic Islands clustered in the Mediterranean.

Known for its sandy beaches, warm waters and megalithic stone monuments, as well as a population that loves a good music fest (including the International Organ Festival) and its unique wine-based gin, Menorca is certainly one of the ideal places on the planet to build a family getaway. This property, originally a farmhouse, was once owned by a family from Barcelona, who had the temerity to divide it into three separate flats. Thankfully, the beautiful home has now been remodelled and restored by its new owners, who proved to be far more sympathetic to its origins.

Read the full story on this Menorcan home.

Greenside Home

It takes a good eye to spot potential in a fixer-upper, particularly in a city like Johannesburg. There are some real gems – almost always undervalued – but their qualities are often lost beneath the add-ons that barnacle their way onto houses over time. Christo Vermeulen and Nico Venter are serial renovators. Inevitably, after a few years of living in a house, they find their eyes wandering.

They most certainly do have a knack for recognising the signs that something special might be lurking beneath the surface a nondescript exterior. Christo is a former textile designer turned builder/renovator – with a sideline in manufacturing bespoke features, especially metalwork and ironmongery – and Nico is an urban designer with an interest in the city’s architectural history. Together, they make a formidable team: insightful and capable, with the perfect combination of vision and respect for the innate qualities of a good find.

Read the full story on this Greenside home.

Modular Scarborough Home

As the owners and founders of hope distillery, one of the first small-batch distillers of craft gin in South Africa, Leigh Lisk and Lucy Beard had grown tired of living on-site at their distillery in Cape Town, and wanted a bolthole to which they could escape every weekend. “Both Leigh and I are keen cyclists and runners who love the outdoors, and so the natural beauty of Scarborough and its proximity to the city made it an obvious choice for us,” says Lucy.

Initially, they had bought an old, abandoned tennis court in the coastal village with a view to building on that, but the prospect of a two-year brick-and-mortar build saw them buy an old one-bedroom, prefab home in the village as a stopgap. “We initially saw it as an interim house that would allow us to stay in Scarborough while overseeing the build – but we ended up loving the house so much that it has become our home.”

Having long admired the German Huf Haus (a prefab-style home) as well as the tiny house movement (an architectural and social philosophy that advocates the simplification of living spaces), the idea for something small and sustainable quickly took hold. “We liked the idea of building a modular structure that would blend into the environment with minimal impact, and a container home made sense as it’s less expensive than building from scratch,” says Lucy.

Read the full story on this modular Scarborough home.

Keurboomstrand Home

There was a non-negotiable in the client brief: respect the land. It’s not difficult to see why – the parcel of earth the residence was built on is pristinely beautiful. “The farm is situated near Plettenberg Bay, on a large portion of land filled with indigenous forest, with rivers running through it and a view of the Tsitsikamma Mountains,” says architect Paul Oosthuizen, giving context to his client’s instructions. “There was one patch of invasive wattle on the land, which was cleared – this became the area we developed.”

To find the perfect spot on which to build, Paul surveyed the sloped piece of land by climbing some of the tall trees on its periphery, then decided on the bottom of the hill, so the house could be nestled into the forest and give his client a view of the riverbed. Next up, Simon Hart and his team at No Fuss Construction brought Paul’s vision to life. The result is a home that feels intimately connected to its woodsy surroundings, and secluded from the world beyond. In fact, reaching it is a pursuit that requires visitors to make the last 60-metre journey on foot.“ As you approach, you drive along a road that’s right up against the forest to your left,” says Paul. “You then park in a garage that’s buried underground, get out, and walk along a boardwalk that goes through a canopy of trees, about eight metres off the ground, before you arrive in the courtyard. It offers the guests the sense that they’ve ‘discovered’ a house in the middle of a forest.”

Read the full story on this Keurboomstrand Home.

Malmesbury Home

“There was a wonderful feeling of glamorous decay to her,” says interior designer Etienne Hanekom of the grand old Victorian home he is lovingly restoring in Malmesbury. Languishing elegantly on a ridge overlooking the historic farming town an hour west of Cape Town, the generously proportioned four-bedroom house was built in 1850, when Malmesbury was still a popular destination for its revered hot springs.

Recent history, however, has not been kind. Rapid industrialisation of the town, as well as the ignominious positioning of a busy arterial road right in front of the house, threatened a fate of idle deterioration. Until Etienne stepped in. “I’d been keeping an eye on her, as I frequently used to drive past on my way to visit my parents,” he says. On an impulse, he decided to stop for a closer look, and discovered that the rambling 2 500m2 property took up an entire residential block, and had several unused outbuildings. The main house still retained original, metal- pressed ceiling tiles, timber floorboards and shutters, cast-iron fireplaces, and a deep front stoep so particular to its era.

Read the full story on this Malmesbury home.

Johannesburg Home

In Johannesburg, there’s no mountain and there’s no sea,” says architect Anthony Orelowitz, referring to homes in Cape Town that tend to look outwards, seeking to catch a glimpse of the ocean or frame a view of Table Mountain. “Here, you have to create your own habitat.” And that, at heart, was the basis of his response to Johannesburg’s urban character when he designed his own home in the city’s forested suburbs. Anthony’s firm, Paragon, is responsible for some of the city’s most significant commercial architectural landmarks – but, he says, “I hadn’t done a house in nearly 15 years.” Nevertheless, working closely with architect Elliot Marsden and interior designer Julia Day, he conjured a vision of what it means to make a home in Joburg, at once perfectly suited to the city and utterly unlike its neighbours.

To create his habitat, Anthony turned to the archetype of the atrium house: an internal courtyard wrapped on all sides by the house, creating a peaceful sanctuary at its heart, open to the sky. He calls it a “self-contained oasis in the city”. The house is essentially a series of pavilions, with vast sliding doors and screens that can be opened and closed to reconfigure a mosaic of spaces in a variety of ways. (A new rail system had to be designed to manage the massive glass panels that make up the sliding doors.)

Read the full story on this Johannesburg home.

Provence Farmhouse

One might’ve expected a couple to pick Tuscany as their European home, but it was an area northeast of Marseille in Provence that they chose instead. Dazzled by the beauty of the place and its historical heritage, for 20 years this globetrotting family had rented houses in the area, waiting for the ideal moment to buy their own. A few years ago, they were lucky enough to find a Provençal farmhouse in its original condition that had once belonged to the family of 19th-century French novelist Alphonse Daudet – and its renovation turned out to be a fascinating journey.

Steering the makeover was architect Pierre-Olivier Brèche, head of the multidisciplinary firm POBA. “I was immediately drawn to the wonderful topography of sloping land – it was an opportunity to play with levels of patios, terraced gardens and roof lines,” he says.

Read the full story on this Provence farmhouse.

Nieu-Bethesda Cottage

Most famous for its legendary, reclusive, eccentric resident, artist Helen Martins, and her home, the Owl House, the town of Nieu-Bethesda is as far as you can get from South Africa’s big metropoles. From Joburg, it’ll take you just under nine hours to get to this remote dot nestled among the koppies of the semi-arid Great Karoo; it might be 15 minutes less from Cape Town. And that’s just one reason that made Joburg couple Marc Watson and James Moffatt’s decision to buy a house here a brave one. The other was that they bought it without seeing the interior.

Visiting here as tourists in 2018, they bought the cottage based purely on its charming iron friezes and traditional wooden shutters, only guessing at what was hidden behind the heritage façade. “But we had a good sense of what such a traditional home would hold,” says Marc.

Read the full story on this Nieu-Bethesda cottage.

Pniel Farmhouse

Smitten by its location in the picturesque village of Pniel at the foot of the Simonsberg mountain in Stellenbosch, Dané Erwee and Chris Willemse bought this 2.5-hectare piece of land 10 years ago. The idea was to start a flower farm that could supply their floral retail business, Okasie. “There was nothing here then besides a few gardenia bushes and plum trees,” recalls Chris, a horticulturist. “Our first mission was to build a road that would allow the builders to access the land.”

Architect Henri Comrie was entrusted to design the house. “We chose Henri for his strong ideas, and because we knew he’d give us something timeless,” says Dané, a master florist and landscape designer. “In fact, his answer to our brief for a re-imagined farmhouse was so spot on that, from the moment we received the proposed plans for this house, we honestly didn’t change a thing.”

Set between two peaks, the 400m2 house strikes an iconic pose against its backdrop of majestic mountains. “It’s like a temple that locks the peaks into its power forever,” explains Henri. “The idea was that, by establishing itself as a central place in this huge landscape, the house is able to command a potency far exceeding its size.”

Read the full story on this Pniel farmhouse.

Witklipfontein Eco Lodge

Architect Xavier Huyberechts has a wonderfully poetic way of describing the way he designed the weekend getaway he and his brother, Damien, built on their farm in the Vredefort Dome – the oldest and biggest meteorite impact site on the planet. He wanted to “gently lift the carpet at the bottom of the hill and slide the house underneath”.

And that’s exactly what he’s done. A green roof runs seamlessly from the hillside and over the house, like a blanket of earth that renders it almost invisible from many angles. In fact, the way it has been designed and built means it can – and will, at the end of its life – disintegrate and become reabsorbed into the earth. It’s made almost entirely from the earth, and emphatically for the earth.

Xavier runs a commercial architectural practice in Johannesburg known for pioneering sustainable architecture. With Damien taking on the role of building contractor, they set about creating an earth house using local materials. It may be built of stacked stone, rammed earth, handmade compacted earth bricks and earth bags, but this is no Hobbit burrow. Beneath that green roof is a clean-lined, low-slung, modernist-inspired villa, with lofty volumes and floor-to- ceiling glass doors that slide away into wall cavities and open the house completely to the surrounding landscape.

Read the full story on the Witklipfontein Eco Lodge.

Franschhoek Home

It has been a 21-year-long labour of love. Marti Heyns-Foster admits that, when she first moved into her corner home on a shaded street in the Winelands, it wasn’t her dream abode. But it had good bones, high ceilings, original wooden floors and plenty of natural light, and the young mother knew she could work with the basics. Over the following two decades, with her sharp eye for the quirky and the unique, Marti lovingly curated a sanctuary filled with French-inspired decor and objects. “In my opinion, a home should evolve over time, reflecting your changing tastes as you develop as person,” she says. “A real home is a representation of how all the members of the household live and grow.”

The property is set far back from public view, at a jaunty angle. In front, a formal French garden spills out towards the road, the result of a visit to a château in the Loire Valley that overlooked a striking landscape. “My friend, designer André Carl van der Merwe (author of Moffie), was there with me to celebrate a friend’s birthday, and he sketched out the garden for me, creating an illusion of symmetry.” Today, dominated by two ancient white stinkwood trees, Marti’s indigenous rhus-hedged garden is not yet two years old – and is a genteel alternative to the white pebbles that filled the space before.

Read the full story on this Franschhoek home.

Kerala Estate Cottage

The vast tracts of private land that fan out from the Witte and Bastiaanskloof rivers in the Bainskloof Valley are home to the elusive Cape leopard and impressive birdlife. This is the Kerala Estate and reserve, and being here is a nature lover’s ultimate escape – a chance to unplug while appreciating the fynbos-scented air and the thrill of bracing mountain-water swims.

Keri Paddock and husband Sam understand this appeal, and after purchasing their sweeping Bainskloof property in 2018, set about creating serene living spaces so their family and friends can fully benefit from the surroundings. In fact, their 800-hectare chunk of paradise forms part of the Boland Mountain Complex in the Cape Floral Region, one of nine areas in South Africa designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites.

With a clear idea in mind, the couple tasked architect Bridget George of KLG Architects with updating the existing buildings. They also contracted landscaping company Oasis Design to integrate the dwellings into the terrain, and to create unexpected garden spaces filled with fynbos and proteas.

Read the full story on this Kerala Estate cottage.

Montagu Home

The scenic Route 62 o the Klein Karoo unfolds into vivid pictures of rolling rocky mountains and lush vineyards, followed by a slow ascent as you head into the historic town of Montagu, as well-known for its beautifully preserved buildings as it is for its hiking trails. The old town might seem an unusual location for this modern and minimalist home, but it turns out to be ideal for a hideaway in which time stands still.

“Hendre transformed the design into something we love,” says homeowner Martly Calitz of the interior designer who pieced together the significant details that make this home unique – including the decision to paint it mostly white with touches of black, which sets off the warm, earthy terracotta floors beautifully. Hendre Bloem is known for his clean and modern yet luxurious aesthetic, and he very much shared the couple’s vision of creating a home that embodies the maxim “less is more”.

Read the full story on this Montagu home.

Klein Karoo Farmhouse

With a reputation for designing trailblazing buildings across the globe, Greg Truen and his partner Nancy Kashimoto chose to use a different approach when taking on the renovation of a 200-year-old farmhouse. Instead of putting their own contemporary spin on the structure, they breathed new life into the property in the most respectful way. “The idea was always to keep what I found on the farm as pure as possible,” says Greg. Lured by the charming building in Buffelsdrift, a farming district nestled between the Swartberg and Langeberg mountains, Greg embarked on a design and renovation process that spanned four years and would transform the neglected property into a working olive farm.

The property included outbuildings that Greg also saw potential in – the old wine store, for example, would be given a second life as a guest suite. One of the challenges he faced was that some of the previous additions hadn’t been done particularly sensitively and, he says, “I wanted to strip the farmhouse back to what it was, and let it sit in a less encumbered way in the landscape.”

The buildings had been constructed using the poured earth method, and covered with various types of plaster over the years. Greg chose to collaborate with architect Jaco Booyens, who has a particular interest in building with clay and earth.

Read the full story on this Klein Karoo farmhouse.

Eclectic Hout Bay Home

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 the full story on this eclectic Hout Bay home.

Salt Rock Home

It’s a great house to wake up in every morning, and a great house to dwell in,” says interior designer and artist Lisa Twyman of her home. “It makes you feel free, positive, motivated, excited.”

Lisa and husband Will Haynes fell in love with the plot situated in Salt Rock, on the Indian Ocean coastline north of Durban, because of its geography – so much so that the build became very much about the garden. “We did not want to impose on it or mess up the flow of it too much,” she says. “During the first few years that we lived here, any extra budget was spent on the garden and planting.”

The key principle for Lisa and Will was that the house needed to become a part of the landscape. This meant including elements such as a ground-floor living area that opens up completely to the outdoors, allowing the spaces to be opened or enclosed as required. This “blurred boundary” – as Lisa describes it – between interior and exterior is further enhanced by the fully open-plan nature of the living, dining and kitchen spaces, as well as the application of simple, low-maintenance materials such as unadorned off-shutter concrete, and the balau wood used for cladding and screening where necessary.

Read the full story on this Salt Rock home.

Modern Hout Bay Home

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.

Read the full story on this modern Hout Bay home.

Modern Pretoria Home

Our journey on this project started with a phone call, which turned into a fascinating conversation,” says architect Greté van As of meeting the owners of this striking home for the first time. Having distilled their passion for balance between nature, people and architecture into an award-winning signature style, architectural duo Johan Wentzel and Greté van As of W Design Architecture Studio were, she says, thrilled at the opportunity to design a new residence for a like-minded family on one of the last pieces of pristine bushveld in Pretoria.

Blessed with spectacular views towards the north, and with the magnificent Bronberg Mountain as a backdrop, the architects were inspired to design a home that would merge unobtrusively into this very unique landscape. “We challenged ourselves to leave behind the smallest of footprints while introducing built structures into the sensitive surroundings,” Johan says.

Read the full story on this modern Pretoria home.

Lanseria Estate Home

When architect Gillian Holl set about designing a house for the generous piece of paradise she shares with her husband Ivan, an engineer, and son Noah, one of her first considerations was to create a space that did not simply blend in with the surrounding grasslands and Magaliesberg foothills, but was actually knitted into the landscape.

To this end, the Holls excavated to allow the steel-framed building with floating concrete slabs and swathes of glass to settle unobtrusively on the riverside terrain. But estate regulations required all excavated earth remain on-site – and even after creating the grassy berms that hug the garden, there was still plenty left over. The solution? A central rammed-earth wall that forms an axis from the entrance all the way through the airy house.

Read the full story on this Lanseria Estate home.

Minimalist Joburg Home

Edoardo Villa’s journey had been a long one: from Italy to South Africa as a prisoner of war, and from classic realism to abstract modernism as an artist. After his release, he chose to stay on in Johannesburg and for a time lived and worked at the home of artist Douglas Portway in Kew, a suburb on the eastern fringe of the city.

Villa soon became a prominent figure in the local art world and in the great surge of creative innovation that lit up the middle of the century. He was able to buy the Portway house in 1959, and in 1968 commissioned Ian McLennan to design a house for him on the same property, giving him no brief and a very small budget.

It was a time when the symmetries and conventions of old suburbia were being turned inside out. Streets were walled off, living spaces opened up, on to courtyards, bricked patios and a new seclusion. Flow and transparency became all-important, framed in a new vernacular of simple materials and earthy textures.

Read the full story on this minimalist Joburg home.

Oudtshoorn Heritage Home

All Karoo towns have their own rustic appeal, but Oudtshoorn has panache. The flamboyant spirit of the feather barons lives on in its lavish sandstone buildings with their broekielace fretwork – and in its feisty charm.

Interior designer David Strauss succumbed to this charm five years ago while looking for a house to buy for once-a-month getaways from Cape Town. He found a solid old sandstone classic, built in the town’s Victorian heyday, in West Bank. No palace this: a deep stoep, a string of small rooms off a wide central passage, the only flourish a wagon-wheel precast fence. Some renovation was necessary, but the age of the house meant the exterior could not be modified and any alterations would have to be undertaken under the strict eye of the heritage authorities.

“I was a bit lost to start off with because I knew nobody,” says David. “But this is such a friendly town. And everybody knows everybody else, which is very helpful. If you get stuck, you just ask somebody, anybody.”

Read the full story on this Oudtshoorn heritage home.

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The post 26 Enchanting Garden Homes appeared first on Visi.

Johannesburg architect Anthony Orelowitz designed a home for his family that reinvents the meaning of a haven in the city.

In Johannesburg, there’s no mountain and there’s no sea,” says architect Anthony Orelowitz, referring to homes in Cape Town that tend to look outwards, seeking to catch a glimpse of the ocean or frame a view of Table Mountain. “Here, you have to create your own habitat.” And that, at heart, was the basis of his response to Johannesburg’s urban character when he designed his own home in the city’s forested suburbs. Anthony’s firm, Paragon, is responsible for some of the city’s most significant commercial architectural landmarks – but, he says, “I hadn’t done a house in nearly 15 years.” Nevertheless, working closely with architect Elliot Marsden and interior designer Julia Day, he conjured a vision of what it means to make a home in Joburg, at once perfectly suited to the city and utterly unlike its neighbours.

To create his habitat, Anthony turned to the archetype of the atrium house: an internal courtyard wrapped on all sides by the house, creating a peaceful sanctuary at its heart, open to the sky. He calls it a “self-contained oasis in the city”. The house is essentially a series of pavilions, with vast sliding doors and screens that can be opened and closed to reconfigure a mosaic of spaces in a variety of ways. (A new rail system had to be designed to manage the massive glass panels that make up the sliding doors.)

Rather than simply surround the central courtyard, however, Anthony describes the way in which he “pushed” the landscape through the pavilions and out to the edges of the site. “The ground plane washes through the house completely from one end to the other,” he says. This, he explains, creates “secondary courtyards” around the house, where the pavilions open onto private, peaceful nooks under the trees, and the boundary walls in effect become the walls of the house.

Despite its long, low-slung appearance, the house also rises to create an upper level in the treetops, carefully designed around branches that lean into and over it. It’s like a “big, adult treehouse”, says Anthony. The effect is a sense of space knitted together vertically as it is horizontally,drawing you up to the terraces as much as through the house and gardens below.

Anthony designed it “upside down”, with the bedrooms at ground level, nestled under the trees, and the living and outdoor entertainment areas – even the pool, with portholes underneath looking down into the central courtyard – on the level above. He says that when he wakes in the morning, he wants to “touch the ground” and “be in the forest”. He also speaks of wanting “sensory feedback” when touching surfaces throughout the house, from the walls to the floors. The rough sensuality of stone, the lushness of plants and the elemental presence of air and water lean away from the minimalism of European modernism in the direction of tropical modernism, with its early origins in Brazil.

Julia has echoed this with a carefully controlled palette of interior finishes selected for their natural, tactile, raw attributes. She’s also continued the sense of surprise and discovery throughout, particularly in the detailed cabinets and wall panelling that conceal storage and even entire rooms. The effect is that it brings the house down to a comfortably human scale.

For the furnishings, Julia drew heavily on designs from DePadova, Ligne Roset and Wiener GTV, as well as local designers such as Haldane Martin, selecting pieces that combine beautifully without competing. She favoured low-slung designs – often light, fairly transparent pieces that don’t interrupt the lines of sight or “break” the views and the sense of flowing, continuous space. “There’s nothing that interrupts the eye,” as she puts it.

The secret to this home remains in the detailing, in being able to sustain a clear vision from the “big idea” right through to the tiniest detail. Of course, such painstaking attention only pays off if the idea is convincing in the first place. If it is, the idea is elevated, and you have the makings of an architectural landmark. In this case, the idea was not so much to create a building or a house in the traditional sense,as a place. “Can you make your home your favourite space in the city?”asks Anthony. The open courtyard at the heart of this home is an invitation to do so.

Looking for more architectural inspiration? Sign up to our weekly newsletter, here, or take a look at Barloworld Equipments HQ which was designed by Paragon Architects.

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An award-winning industrial showroom in Joburg shows how, with creativity and design savvy, architecture can transcend functionality.

Drive along the R24 highway near OR Tambo International Airport, and you can’t help but notice it: a huge, bubble-shaped building with a glass front displaying gigantic excavators, bulldozers, graders and the like. Recently recognised by the Gauteng Institute for Architecture with an Award of Excellence, Barloworld Equipment’s headquarters is an exciting architectural flourish in the industrial landscape of Isando – especially when viewed among the relentless functional aesthetics of the other warehouses and factories in the area.

However, as Anthony Orelowitz, director at Paragon Architects (who designed the building) explains, this building is as efficiently engineered and cost-sensitive as any of them. He and his team simply found a way to liberate some extra design value.

What you see from the highway is a showroom with offices at the back, which is part of a larger campus for Barloworld Equipment, the southern African dealer for Caterpillar earthmoving machinery. The complex includes the company head office and a training centre; the eye-catching showroom was a new addition in a broader renovation.

Anthony explains that the distinctive shape of the showroom building was motivated by two things. First was the realisation that one of the most efficient ways to “capture the volume” necessary to house the gigantic vehicles was to create a bubble rather than a box. The poetry came with the savvy insight that the looping shape with a roof that comes right down to the ground is reminiscent of the iconic “caterpillar” tread associated with earthmoving equipment.

And this equipment is huge – the biggest vehicles weigh in at 60 tons. Their wheels alone, Anthony points out, are too big to get through an ordinary garage door. In fact, he says that the double-glazed vertical sliding doors they had to design to get the equipment in and out are the largest in the world, at 8.4m by 5.5m.

By playing with the iconography of the building’s form, in a single design gesture they could achieve the necessary scale to house the machinery and create what Anthony calls “an object as opposed to just a space for these vehicles”. Its position alongside a busy highway was a perfect opportunity for “building as billboard”, he adds.

Seen from a distance, the building and equipment are in proportion, but the sheer scale of the earthmoving machinery – and the space to house it – can be unsettling close up. When you take into account the fact that the building is also an office space, you get a sense of the challenge the architects faced in reconciling the vast volumes with the need for something that has comfortable human dimensions for the people working there.

The showroom has two key areas – a “loop within a loop” as Anthony describes it. There’s a glassed-in showroom, where the offices are also located, and another covered outdoor display area. The building actually curves, so that you don’t take it in all at once. “It reveals itself in a journey, as you travel from one end to the other,” Anthony explains. The curve was a massive challenge for the engineers, especially when combined with a curved roof, but the teams pulled it off, and have rightfully won several awards for their trouble, notably at the Southern African Institute of Steel Construction’s Steel Awards.

Inside, extensive internal landscaping and planting create a soft barrier between the otherwise open and connected showroom space and the offices, which brings down the scale. The planting also “brings the outside in”, so to speak, in a playful inversion of outside and inside that riffs off the notion of having earthmoving equipment indoors in the first place.

This building is a fine example of how, with a little insight, some engineering wizardry and a keen architectural eye, what might have been a bland and functional space is instead a landmark – and a delight.

Looking for more architectural inspiration? Sign up to our weekly newsletter, here, or take a look at this feature on how to go off the grid sustainably.

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Global office-sharing group WeWork has opened its first space in South Africa, designed by Paragon Architects, in collaboration with WeWork’s London design team.

As this is WeWork’s first office in Africa, the brand knew it needed to be a definitive statement that reflected WeWork as a global giant in shared workspaces. Situated at 173 Oxford Road in Johannesburg’s Rosebank, also known as The Link, the space spans six floors across 10 000 m².

“The design was driven from the design team based in London,” says Paragon Interface Director Claire D’Adorante. “It was a very collaborative arrangement, whereby they ensured we received a ‘look-and-feel’ design intent for the project, as well as layouts and technical information pertaining to their requirements.”

Design-and-build specialist Trend Group, which has taken on projects for the likes of Facebook, Oracle, Google, Red Bull, Uber, BBC and Coca-Cola, was chosen to oversee the mammoth construction project. From electro-mechanical and plumbing solutions to all of the fit-out components, the project required a total overhaul to be completed in just 14 weeks.

The final product is a series of shared office spaces with a strong design focus on comfortable communal areas. There’s a community bar and a host of inviting pause areas that boast a variety of soft furnishings that challenge the clinical-style of traditional offices. Internal glass walls welcome a wealth of natural light and views of the city.

For more information, visit wework.com.

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The winners of the 2018 Corobrik SAIA Architectural Awards have been announced.

After creating a shortlist from 61 regional winners, six projects received Awards of Excellence, 24 Awards of Merit and five received commendations. Judges included SAIA President Maryke Cronje, Corobrik Commercial Director Musa Shangase, VISI’s Editor-in-Chief Sumien Brink, academic Professor Paul Kotze and architect, urban designer and Director of DesignSpaceAfrica, Dr Luyanda Mpahlwa.

The six Awards of Excellence winners included the research project publication NZASM Footsteps Along The Tracks, written by Nicholas J Clarke & Roger C Fisher, assisted by Siphiwe Simelane. Below, in no particular order, are the five buildings and structures that received top honours.

New Residence (as featured on page 60 of the latest issue of VISI)

Location: Constantia, Cape Town

Architects: Malan Vorster Architecture

Image credit: Adam Letch

Image credit: Adam Letch

Image credit: Adam Letch

The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre

Location: Forest Town, Johannesburg

Architects: Lewis Levin Architects

The Lake House

Location: Midlands, KwaZulu-Natal

Architects: Koop Design

SASOL Place

Location: Sandton, Johannesburg

Architects: Paragon Architects

The Delville Wood Memorial

Location: Longueval, France

Architects: The Creative Axis Architects and Mayat Hart Architects

To view 2015/2016’s winners, click here. For more information, visit saia.org.za.

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Sasol is building its new corporate office on Katherine Street in Sandton, Johannesburg.

The suburb of Sandton appears to be in the process of strong architectural growth. Last week we shared Paragon Architects‘ latest project and now they’ve taken on the task of designing Sasol’s new headquarters too. The layout is based on the design of the company’s logo, which features a central sphere surrounded by six rotating spheres. 

Paragon Architects mirrored this concept by designing a central hubspace with other areas linked by a series of bridges. The 10-storey building will span almost 70 000sqm and provide a workspace for 7000 people.

Two large skylights allow natural light to permeate the space and create an open atmosphere. The façade is a reflective glass structure, which is designed to increase visibility to the outside world while still providing privacy and discretion.

Externally, the park-like outdoor areas include courtyards, braai and yoga facilities with water-wise planted areas. Sasol has provided a habitat to promote and encourage indigenous birdlife.

The project is scheduled to be completed in 2016.

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Not all sweat is created equal and when it comes to luxury fitness centres, the Alice Lane Health Club in Sandton sets a precedent for premium exclusivity and elevates exercise to a futuristic lifestyle. 

A portly man stands in the Alice Lane Health Club reception area with his membership card held high, announcing: “We are the Melrose Arch refugees, please let us in.” A woman who looks like a VH1 Mob Wives cast member giggles behind him while her designer bag jiggles on her arm. 

This is the 108th club to be opened in South Africa under Sir Richard Branson’s chain and only the third, since the original Melrose Arch Club, to be given “Classic Collection” status. No mean feat considering the Alice Lane Health Club cost R150 million to build, drawing on the services of Paragon Architects, Design Line Architecture & Interiors, Tonic Design and Paul Pamboukian Lighting Design.

In terms of equipment, the training floor is populated with cutting-edge gear: a Queenax functional frame, a sort of adult jungle gym; the latest, slickest Artis range of Technogym treadmills; and Wattbikes and Myride technology, offering a virtual experience of some of the world’s best routes. 

The Aqua Lounge, an impressive Jacuzzi area, is fitted with understated aqua loungers that look “like sculptures you can lie on,” says Dawid Rabie of Design Line. Other novelties include an Anti-Gravity Yoga studio and an open-air rooftop training area. 

But that’s not all… there’s a boardroom for exclusive use by members, Kohu restaurant, Brew Bar that serves specialist coffee, a shoeshine bar, concierge service, a nook and poolside lounge. It is the warm flattering lighting – designed by Pamboukian Lighting – throughout that emphasises the double-storey building’s spacious linear volume.

“The round fittings on the lights were done locally,” explains Paul Pamboukian. “The idea was to create as much flexibility as possible compared to normal light. In the yoga section, LED lights throughout are programmable to alter the mood. There’s also a red LED strip in the handrail that lights up the staircase.”

This red Caesarstone staircase, the brainchild of Lizl van Wyk and an all-female team from Design Line, is an iconic piece of the club. It’s also a “Virgin moment” – like the ice cream on Virgin Atlantic flights. Another Virgin moment is having “His” and “Hers” emblazoned on the dressing-room doors. “‘Male’ and ‘Female’ are overused terms and it’s what everyone else would do,” proclaims Richard Lamb-Hughes, brand director of Virgin Active South Africa. “Now, we own ‘His’ and ‘Hers’ for our Classic Collection and, in turn, all the Virgin signature spaces that we designed for this Club.”

The dressing rooms are decked out with Duravit toilets, Axor Hansgrohe basins, and Wisteria Lane liquid soap and body lotion – all of which ooze subtle sophistication, as well as a steamroom and sauna. The “Hers” section is fitted with mirrors framed by bulbs to give a Hollywood feel. “We had these mirrors specially made, which was hellishly nightmarish because they emit three sources of light!” exclaims Philippe van der Merwe of Tonic Design. “But it feels more glamorous and not at all like you’re in a gym bathroom. It was a conscious decision to bring that in.” 

The shoeshine bar was another deliberate effort, says Philippe: “The Melrose Arch Club has a guy polishing shoes and we were asked to reinvent that image of someone sitting in a throne-like chair, because it felt outdated. So we decided it should be a bar.” As well as the custom-made red chairs in the lounge, he continues, “We wanted a signature chair with red to be in it, because it’s Virgin’s identity, but we also looked at complementary colouring and it all worked out.”

“The club has upped its food game,” Philippe adds. “You can have a full dinner here – which is especially good for single people.” So it’s a good place to get a date? “I’m not saying that,” he laughs, “I’m married.” 

The clientele at the Alice Lane Health Club includes silver-haired men, women who wear Chanel sunglasses to train on the rooftop and young Gail Mabalane clones. 

Summer will probably see more of the members gravitating to the rooftop that, like the rest of the building, is in line with green building standards. “The team spent 18 months working on this. It’s such a pleasure to watch the sunrise from the treadmill,” beams Richard. “You can see Sandton’s CBD.” 

Back inside, a friendly receptionist lets the “refugees” in. She confirms that the Club has around 300 founding members and although it could easily accommodate 9 000 clients, the plan is to keep the membership at 4 000. “Obviously, its major pull is its exclusivity,” Richard quips. And even with membership fees of R1 600 per month – with discounts depending on private medical-aid schemes –  “sales are going very, very well.”   

 For more information visit virginactive.co.za.

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The AfriSam-SAIA Award for Sustainable Architecture 2014 (Built Work Category) went to the 4-star Green Star rated Alexander Forbes headquarters in Sandton.

Paragon Architects and Paragon Interface took not only the Alexander Forbes employees into account when coming up with their design, but the environmental impact the building would have on its surroundings. Since opening its doors two years ago, water consumption has been reduced by 70%, waste generation by 50% and energy consumption by 40%.

AfriSam CEO, Stephan Olivier says, “In acknowledging this building as the recipient of the AfriSam-SAIA Award for Sustainable Architecture for 2014 in the built category, it is hoped that the Alexander Forbes Headquarters will provide a beacon of inspiration, not only as a place to work, but also as a worthwhile contribution to the urban fabric of Johannesburg and human experience in the area.”

Watch below to find out more about this outstanding example of environmental architecture.

Durban-based Koop Design took home the award for Works of Social Importance category (including research) for Vukuzakhe.

“Vukuzakhe is a brave attempt to record, evaluate and propose systems for urban construction in South Africa,” adds Olivier. “The litmus test remains for the document to be implemented and robustly challenged which, if successful, could offer realistic opportunities for urban development in South Africa.”

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Browse last year’s winners here.

Read our interview with Henning Rasmuss of Paragon Architects here.

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Lees in Afrikaans.

Henning Rasmuss is a co-director with Anthony Orelowitz at Paragon Architects. They were part of the design team for the Cape Town stadium and the practice that designed 15 Alice Lane and the new Alexander Forbes building on 115 West Street (featured in VISI 66 The Office). Henning now has his aspirations set on Africa. He speaks to Nechama Brodie about some of the landscapes that have shaped his journey.

The 1970s: The last building boom

As a child, growing up in Johannesburg, Henning would accompany his father on trips into “town”, catching the bus from Melville.  

“I would go look at building sites while he completed his errands,” Henning says. “He would put me up against a hoarding – there would be viewing holes cut into the sides, at adult height and at kid height. He’d leave me there for hours. It left a deep impression. I grew up watching the last big building boom of Johannesburg.”

Henning remembers watching the completion of the old Standard Bank building – a “hanging building”, built from the top down – and the Carlton Centre.

“What I remember most is the smell,” he says, “the smell of concrete and welding. The sounds and smells. The size of the excavations…”  

At some point Henning asked his father: “What do all these people do?”

Henning’s father explained that the only person who knew what everyone was doing on site was the architect.  

The 1980s: Broken buildings

Henning says he was slightly drunk the night he decided to study architecture – it was during his national service and he had to complete his university application forms, deciding between law and architecture.

“I asked one of my friends [which course I should choose],” he says. “He said ‘you’re such an arsehole already, you’ll make a terrible lawyer.’ So I ticked architecture.”

At university Henning says he “ate, drank and slept architecture,” together with a close group of friends that included Thorsten Deckler of 26’10 Architects (also featured in VISI 66 The Office). His studies coincided with the marked decline of Johannesburg’s CBD when major tenants abandoned the city centre for Braamfontein or the nascent CBD of Sandton and the suburbs. 

“We got into the idea of broken buildings, old industrial buildings, imploded buildings – the brokenness of stuff and the skeletons of buildings. It was a 1980s thing,” he says, of the obsession with structure and deconstruction, “like working with photocopies and Letraset.” 

The 1990s: Resurrection

Henning says that when he was a young graduate “everyone was talking about how Jo’burg was dead. It irritated me a lot – [being] a young architect in a city everybody said was finished. I wanted to understand why.”

After 1994, Henning began encountering “all sorts of foreign architects who had an interest in Johannesburg.” He gave tours of the city, and says “I only got excited about Jo’burg architecture when I started taking [overseas visitors] around.”

It cued a new stage: where, Henning says, he began to understand the link between social history and architecture.

“I’ve always had a strong interest in history,” he says. “Generally I understand cities through history – every period, every decade is defined by the stuff that went down,” or, case in point, the buildings that went up.

“When I lived in Berlin I knew everything’s history,” Henning says. “I’d lived in Johannesburg my whole life, but realised I only understood a fraction of its story.”

Walking through the eastern inner city – the former “garment district”, now edged by the Maboneng Precinct – Henning saw “old industrial architecture that had become derelict because of apartheid, when the textile industry had been moved to the homelands. I saw how the government had broken the city. I started to understand why parts of a city rise and fall.”

Henning spent time in Hillbrow, Bellevue, Yeoville and Observatory, marking the cyclical nature of Jo’burg’s urban migration and signs of life in what many others had written off as dead spots. “You could still go to Café Zurich [in Hillbrow],” an iconic coffee and hangout spot where, Henning says, his father (an immigrant from Germany) had spent time in the 1950s, “and see new generations of immigrants”, now hailing from Africa instead of Europe. 

Transitional spaces

It was during the 1990s that Henning and Thorsten started “working in a reactive way.”

Henning says that that he and Thorsten “invited [themselves] to the Venice [Architecture] Biennale. We got drunk and sent in a submission.”

When they were invited to present, Henning says he realised they “had to tell a story about Johannesburg. We needed to know stuff – and give the story an attitude, and a flavour.”

As a result, he says, he developed a “strong opinion on just about anything to do with Jo’burg,” which in turn led to him becoming [together with Thorsten] one of the go-to urban thinkers about anything to do with the re-emerging city. The pair participated in a number of exhibitions and publications engaging with transitional spaces in South Africa, working together with Thorsten’s (now) business partner and wife Anne Graupner.  

While Thorsten and Anne “spun off into an activist practice,” Henning says he became “more mainstream”.

In 1997, after returning from working in Hong Kong for several months, Henning started what would become Paragon Architects, together with Anthony Orelowitz.

The building with the lift

“We started like everyone else,” Henning says, of Paragon, “doing bathroom renovations and patios and kitchens. We hunted for work.”

Now, Henning says, the only work they won’t take is private houses.

“We went where the money was,” he states, saying that he and Orelowitz actively began pursuing large developers and developments.

Their first major project was the renewal of the Peregrine Holdings head office in Sandton, which involved adding two extra floors and excavating the site for parking and landscaping.

In 2002 Paragon was awarded its “first building with a lift” – part of the development at Melrose Arch. The lift is now part of the firm’s history: Henning explains they had been courting property developer and investor Zenprop for some time; the director had told them he would consider giving Paragon work “when somebody else gave us a building with a lift,” says Henning.  

They called Zenprop the day they got the Melrose Arch job, and subsequently went on to do so much work for the company that Paragon almost became viewed as Zenprop’s in-house architects. (Zenprop is responsible for developing both the Norton Rose and Alexander Forbes buildings.)     

Raising the roof

Paragon was one of the partners responsible for creating the Cape Town Stadium in Green Point, in a joint venture through POINT Architects & Urban Designers, working on the structure between 2006 until it was handed over to the City of Cape Town in 2009.

“For me it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says Henning, adding that “I chose the parts of the project that interested me, which was mainly the roof. The structure was incredible high-tech. It involved over 9 000 pieces of glass, of which only 6 800 were the same size. The roof also had to be able to lift up and down, to expand in the wind.”

The stadium – and the roof in particular – went on to win a number of international design and construction awards, but the project came at a high cost for Henning, who says that he “lost almost all of [his] Jo’burg clients” as a result of his time away in Cape Town. 

Growing a global practice

“Anthony and I have started a series of other businesses over the years, which now make up the Paragon Group,” Henning explains, including Hub Architects with Jean-Paul Zietsman, Paragon Interface Architects with Marilize van Dyk, Paragon Habitat Architects with Nadia Tromp, Aspire Architects with Rendani Netshilema, Paragon Arquitetura [in Brazil] with Leticia de Andrade, and Paragon Architects South Africa with Thulani Sibande. “This is the story of the journey with different partners,” Henning says.

Henning has been working in Africa for over a decade, and now only does African development work. “We decided one of the partners had to go after African work, and we’re now in 11 countries, with projects in six of these.

“People come to us because they want the kinds of buildings we do in Sandton,” Henning explains. “We don’t go to Ghana and design in a different way. The differences will emerge in the building processes, and become ‘local’ later.”

One of his jobs included building a brewery in Cabinda, Angola, where every single piece had to be imported, “right down to the screws, the nails, the hammers. I’m interested in buildings in logistically challenged locations.”  

Henning says a large proportion of his time in Africa is spent trying to build relationships. “We don’t have projects in all 11 countries, but we’re trying to take our net as wide as we can. We don’t even know where the dots are yet, and I’m trying to connect them.”

Henning says he “spends a lot of time looking out of windows”. He makes one-minute movies everywhere he goes, switching his phone’s camera on for exactly 60 seconds, creating a massive visual collage – of nightclubs, restaurants, building sites, even the food he eats. “I use the videos for briefings,” he explains, “and to map stuff. Then I go back and look at them again. I look at how people are building, at the plasterwork, at tiles.” The details, rather than the architecture, are what absorb him.

“We want to be the best commercial architecture practice on the continent. That’s a long journey. I’m off buildings. I’m designing the business now.”

Get the new VISI 66 The Office to read our feature about the new Alexander Forbes building in Sandton.

Read more of Nechama Brodie’s articles here. 

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