WORDS Graham Wood PHOTOS Paris Brummer PRODUCTION Annemarie Meintjies

A few years ago, when a handful of curious architects made a pilgrimage to this spectacular 1970s house in Waterkloof in Pretoria, one described it as a “time capsule”. “We’ve lived here for 48 years,” says its owner. As a result, the architecture and the furniture are perfectly preserved, looking just as she envisioned them nearly five decades ago. Everything has been meticulously maintained, and the house has an almost otherworldly, hallucinogenic quality that leaves you feeling transported in time.

It was designed by architect Petrus Paulus (Piet) van den Berg, a Pretoria architect who, while prolific, hugely versatile and tirelessly experimental over his 50-year career, seems little known outside of local architectural circles. “Piet was a great friend of ours,” says the owner. She and her husband simply wanted “something different” when they engaged him to do the design.

And they certainly got it. Unassuming from the street, the house is on a steep slope. On arrival, visitors drive onto a concrete slab – essentially a rooftop motor court – which wraps around the building, leading to a separate exit. Distinctively shaped fibreglass canopies draw the eye to sweeping views of the city. Brutalist-style columns and heavy wooden doors with ceramic handles hint at the wonders beyond. A concrete spiral staircase descends through a triple-volume atrium filled with a waterfall, a koi pond and a tropical indoor jungle, where palm trees tickle the roof. The ground level features a small aviary built into the columns, and coffered ceilings are a reminder of the raw materiality of the structure. “As you go down, it gets cooler and cooler,” the owner notes.

Rooms float into the atrium on various levels. Light filters down from above, while expansive double-storey windows open to panoramic city views on one side, and a cycad and clivia garden on the other, blurring the line between indoors and out. At the base of the atrium, railway sleepers pave the floor, extending into the hardscaping outside. The owner explains that, originally, the atrium was designed to preserve existing thorn trees on the site, but over time, these were replaced with plants better suited to an indoor environment, including delicious monsters, philodendrons and bamboo palms.

Peter Howard – Piet’s son and a town planner who worked in Piet’s studio for many years – recalls visiting the site prior to construction. He highlights some of Piet’s other Pretoria buildings, including the Yorkcor Park building on Watermeyer Street (with its built-in planters for cycads), Hotel 244 in Arcadia, and Hantra (now Hantra Student Accommodation) and the Totem West apartment building in Sunnyside. The owner also remembers visiting Piet’s Pyramids Motel in Van Reenen.

Peter adds that some of Piet’s formative early work was at the campus of the University of Zululand and the University of Limpopo (then Turfloop). In the University of Zululand’s architecture, he combined Brazilian-inspired Brutalism with local vernacular elements. One of his later projects there – a multipurpose hall “big enough to host a tennis match”, Peter says – features a 70-metre-tall geodesic dome that combines cutting-edge engineering with the influence of traditional grass huts.

Brise-soleils – used for sun protection as well as ventilation – became a signature feature of Piet’s designs. He didn’t exactly mimic Brazilian aesthetics; rather, he incorporated locally influenced patterns drawn from Zulu basketry and beadwork into the brickwork.

Piet’s own 1960s Pretoria home in Lynnwood, built around the same time as the university campuses, was internationally published and is one of the better-known examples of his work. In that instance, he refined the floating brise-soleil panels and Tropical Modernist ideas with greater elegance and luxury. More than a decade later, this Waterkloof house revisited those ideas, emphasising the New Brutalist influence and a tropical influence quite possibly inspired by the visits Piet and the owners made to Mauritius and the Seychelles, and combining sculptural concrete forms with a new kind of extravagance and whimsy.

The house includes a squash court inside and a tennis court outside. “We were very keen on sports,” the owner says. The swimming pool features a mosaic-topped swim-up braai area with submerged barstools – another quirk of tropical island resort architecture.

Inside, many of the furnishings are integrated, including a circular bed in the main suite. Elsewhere, the architecture almost mimics the landscape: on the ground level, lounges and dining areas are defined by changes in floor height. Steps morph into seating, and seats transition into counters. The owner personally selected all furnishings. “I knew exactly what I liked,” she says.

A final whimsical touch is hidden in the hollow columns: brick relief sculptures of monkeys, representing “hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil”. The owner says that they were designed to conceal pipes and services; Peter thinks they may have also been intended as a blessing on the house. Recollections may differ, but the truth is, all the walls of this house are a blessing. What a magical experience it must be to have lived here for half a century…

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Tropicana – a new Miami art deco-inspired hotel by Robert Silke & Partners – revels in a few playful games with its architecture, its interiors and, appropriately, its price tag.

WORDS Steve Smith PRODUCTION Mark Serra PHOTOS Greg Cox

You can’t miss Tropicana – at least on paper. As you can see here, the striking hotel is a dreamy piece of confection that you could as much take a bite out of as step inside. Among its mostly monochromatic neighbours, the light-blue-and-pink Tropicana looks like it’s crowned by a permanent rainbow and staffed by My Little Ponies. Except it’s deceptively hard to spot in the flesh.

Rising from a small triangular plot of land where Sea Point’s Kloof Road forks, Tropicana’s pale blue-meets-pastel pink manages a trick of hiding in plain sight. Along with its curves and soft lines, the blue half of its exterior merges with the sea and sky for most of the day, while the pink folds it into the blush of sunset. Robert Silke, founder of Robert Silke & Partners – the architects of the building – describes it as having “an almost holographic appearance, like you’re not sure if it’s pink or blue or silver”. It’s genius… and a fortuitous stroke of luck.

“It was supposed to be white, like the Flamingo,” says Robert, referring to the nearby Bauhaus-inspired apartment block also designed by his team. “We sort of have an unwritten office policy that our buildings must be white, especially on Sea Point Main Road. But during construction, the client, Signatura, said, ‘Don’t you want to do some colour?’

“We initially fought the idea, and I felt some resentment… I thought, ‘You want colour? I’ll give you colour.’ With the gradation concept, I thought I was presenting them with something they’d never go for. But the moment they saw it, they were like, ‘Yup!’”

Like the trick it plays on the eye, Tropicana also fools around with its architectural style. At first glance, it seems a fun homage to the kind of tropical Art Deco that Miami’s famed South Beach is known for. And it is – but it’s also playfully subversive. For one thing, the way the balconies on the corners alternate and come off the colour-graded scallops breaks all the rules of how trad Art Deco would employ this architectural device.

“The scallops should have come all the way to the ground, creating the idea of a skyscraper on the corner. Ours go off at a tangent onto the balconies, which breaks the skyscraper motif in a way an Art Deco architect would never have done. It’s actually more in line with what Paul Rudolph would have done,” says Robert, referring to the US architect of the 1960s and ’70s known for his avant-garde Brutalist buildings. Strip away the pink and blue paint, down to plain cement, and you’ll indeed have a facade that’s more than just a nod to Brutalism.

“We love that people love our buildings and that they’re crowd-pleasers – but we also try to get a bit of real architectural muscle in at the same time. ‘Good’ buildings can play to both audiences – and there are some architectural in-jokes and references in Tropicana.”

Tropicana doesn’t just laugh up its powder-blue linen shirtsleeve, though; in its own way, it’s all about inclusivity. “Context is everything. Our buildings are designed to speak to the buildings around them – the pretty ones as well as the ordinary ones,” says Robert, referring to the variety of buildings that surround Tropicana, from Art Deco to ’80s and ’90s Pomo, and contemporary black brick and steel. “The hope is that if you speak to those buildings by incorporating bits of them into your design, you acknowledge them, and perhaps help uplift them as well.”

Another stroke of genius was getting Katy Taplin and Adriaan Hugo, the interior product design duo behind Dokter and Misses, to do the furniture and lighting. As with Tropicana’s exteriors, simply replicating Art Deco furniture in the interiors would have been way too on the nose for this project – so instead, Dokter and Misses designed a series of pieces that play somewhere between old, new, Deco, Memphis Group and Futurism.

“I see a strong link between early 1980s Memphis Group furniture and Art Deco,” says Robert. “When Memphis started to appear in Milan in the late 1970s, founder Ettore Sottsass’s pieces were basically all retro Deco. The Miami Art Deco revival movement started in the mid- ’70s, and was an avant garde part of design culture in the late ’70s and early ’80s, with Memphis picking up directly where Deco left off. The Joburg Memphis vibes of Dokter and Misses were, therefore, perfect.”

There is some clever fun and games going on with the interior materials, too. As game as the folks at Signatura were for Tropicana’s whimsical design, the budget was still constrained by the parameters of a spreadsheet. Fortunately, Art Deco was always about being decorative on a limited budget, creating cheap forms with bricks and plaster. If you wanted “premium”, Art Nouveau was more your bag. Deco was for the masses.

Not only does Tropicana’s curved exterior represent that affordability, but Robert, Adriaan and Katy have been pretty canny in mixing expensive and cheap materials. The terrazzo tiles in the passageways and on the kitchen floors and kickplates are, for example, quite pricey – or, as Robert puts it, “reassuringly expensive”. It allowed the team to use cheaper materials such as marble-look melamine for the bedside tables and coffee tables (as decorators actually did in Deco apartments back then), as well as employ clever tricks like installing wonderfully retro ceiling lights made from sheets of MDF, and cheese-light fittings from a local supplier.

The ceramic wall tiles are another example: they’re called Project Grey, and were purchased at Tiletoria for R130-R140/m2. You simply can’t get better value than that. What you can do is pimp them up by adding pink epoxy grout; together, they make a statement.

And then there are the blue vinyl floors. Instead of the ubiquitous faux-oak vinyl go-to favoured by most developers, Robert chose a standard vinyl that’s usually installed in hospitals. It’s not just hard-wearing but, in blue, it’s also fun – and, again, it’s period-correct for 1930s Deco. “It speaks of the sea and the sky… and the budget. It’s, like, R250/m2,” he says. “That said, I don’t think we could have got away with it if we didn’t have the Dokter and Misses furniture!”

The end result of all this is a slice of escapism, which is exactly what you want when you’re on holiday. Holidays need to be memorable – and yes, Intstagrammable – something Tropicana offers in spades. “Pink might not be your favourite colour,” says Robert. “You might not have it in your home. But you would endure it, and probably even enjoy it, for a few weeks while on vacation.” robertsilke.com | dokterandmisses.com

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Weaving together Surrealism, Modernism, bathing and the iconic Nakagin Capsule Tower, architect Robert Silke tells the story of a trip to Tokyo for our new series called VISI Voices.

Our first trip to Japan is now a surreal and dreamlike memory, a frail and ephemeral record of events, subtly evermore corrupted by fantasy each time I should dream of Tokyo.

Our brain is a far-from-reliable storage medium, and studies indicate that we are constantly rewriting our own memories, compressing multiple characters into one, and casting ourselves as heroes in our own narratives. Six years on, our Japanese trip seems to have been a dreamworld of ¥7 000 outsized cherries, petting cafés stocked with Valium- drugged cats, iris-enlarging contact lenses, and spindly, futuristic micro-towers with only one fire escape.

Out of a haze of cherry-blossom and matcha ice-cream cones, flickering neon lights, and obsessively gridded bathroom wall tiles, my most abiding memories are the onsen (traditional hot-water-spring baths), super-sento (theme park baths), and my personal pilgrimage to the condemned Nakagin Capsule Tower building – where I was able to get inside a time capsule micro-apartment.

As a modern architect, I wanted to go to Japan because it seems to be the most modern place in the world, and also the most ancient. To understand Tokyo – and to understand Modernism – is to understand cleanliness. Modernism (white with “clean lines”) is all about hygiene. Before Modernism, buildings barely had bathrooms or kitchens. Today, it seems they only have bathrooms and kitchens. In addition to its memorable robo-douche commode, our 15m2 Shinjuku hotel room had a bath and a separate shower – because, to the Japanese, bathing without showering first is filthy and savage, while showering without bathing is joyless and savage.

The 10m2 capsules of Nakagin Tower didn’t even have kitchens, but of course had both showers and baths – at least on paper. A Metabolist building wears its innards on the outside (like the hi- tech Lloyd’s of London), but Nakagin’s Metabolism was running still. By the time we’d made it to Kisho Kurokawa’s 1972 tower of Babel, the hot-water reticulation had collapsed and the remaining residents were queuing in their dressing gowns for the porta-shower that was erected by the body corporate on the sidewalk outside.

But the Japanese (like the ancient Romans) are okay with bathing in front of others – public bathhouses are a backbone of social cohesion. Men young and old (and, separately, women young and old) use the bathhouse as a social condenser. With no clothes or jewellery, all men are equal; even tattoos are strictly forbidden. While the tattoo ban is often attributed to a fear of the underworld, there is a more fundamental issue: tattoos undermine the anonymity and egalitarianism of the bathhouse. The young are there to reassure the old of continuity; the old are there as a memento mori to the young. There is no status in the bathhouse, and a man in a bathhouse is no more naked than a bison subsumed into the herd.

The Japanese bathhouse is all about the ritual of cleanliness. You are issued with fresh slippers, used solely for the purpose of walking to the lavatory without contaminating your feet or (more importantly) the baths themselves. And they keep close track of where you go in those slippers. (Contrast that with the river of filth through which you wade barefoot to get to and from the showers of your average local gym.) But bathhouse culture is now said to be a dying pastime even in Japan (something attributed to the declining population), and the Nakagin Capsule Tower was demolished – or disassembled, rather – in April 2022. The Japanese seem to have no sentimentality for the built environment; most buildings are regarded as disposable.

It is said that the great earthquake cities – those located on tectonic fault lines, such as San Francisco and Tokyo – are imbued with a sense of ephemerality and impending doom: cities on the precipice of deadly renewal. When we finally get back to Japan, we may well find nothing of what we remember. | robertsilke.com

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As part of our ongoing series, principal architect at Open City, Bettina Woodward, talks to us about the Rowan Lane Houses – one of which she’s fortunate enough to call home.

Almost eight years ago, I booked an appointment with an estate agent to view No. 5 Rowan Lane, pretending to be an interested buyer. In reality, I was just an interested architect – word had spread in the industry that “that house” was for sale. We had just finished renovating a Victorian in Tamboerskloof, and I certainly wasn’t in the market for a new house. However, the moment I stepped inside, I knew I had stumbled upon something special.

I called my husband in tears and told him to come over right away. In about five minutes we decided that we would move the family to Kenilworth.

THE CONTEXT

Antonio de Souza Santos and Adèle Naudé Santos are the creative minds behind some of Cape Town’s most admired houses and multi-storey residential buildings of the late 1960s and early ’70s (like this Kenilworth home). Adèle and Tony (as they were known) formed a powerful duo in architecture and, even though they left for the US after only practising in South Africa for five years, many architects believe their work in Cape Town is the highlight of both their careers, and that their collaboration had a unique brilliance. Their impact can be seen today in the sculptural apartment blocks by Robert Silke & Partners currently going up in Sea Point.

Adèle was born into an influential Afrikaans family; her father was a well-known architect responsible for large projects, including the Brutalist Cape Town Civic Centre. Her grandfather was the painter Hugo Naudé. She completed her studies at the Architectural Association in London. Tony was born in Mozambique and studied at UCT, then at the University of Pennsylvania, before returning to Cape Town.

THE ZEITGEIST

In South Africa in the late ’60s, the architectural spirit was shaped by Modernist and Brutalist influences, emphasising simplicity, functionality and the use of durable materials such as concrete. And while apartheid’s socio-political climate-dictated urban planning and architecture promoted segregation, some architects subtly resisted through inclusive designs. Among them were Adèle and Tony, who blended international Modernist trends with a unique South African identity, creating contextually relevant and humane architectural works.

Fellow architect Roelof Uytenbogaardt’s work was also significant at this time, with its emphasis on public spaces and community-centred design often challenging the urban layouts of apartheid, but also introducing a unique sculptural quality. His controversial Werdmuller Centre was developed concurrently with the Rowan Lane houses – and Adèle and Tony both worked with Uytenbogaardt, as well as taught alongside him at UCT.

NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW THAT…

Despite the buildings’ contemporary appearance, the Rowan Lane houses are part of a family of buildings that can trace their heritage to legendary Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier’s designs penned nearly 100 years ago. Like Le Corbusier’s Curutchet House (1953) in Argentina and Villa Savoye (1931) in France, the Rowan Lane buildings contain many of the same elements: pilotis (pillars/columns), a free-flowing plan, roof gardens and ramps. But the Santoses went beyond mere imitation – they pioneered new spatial sequences that are more flexible, contextually responsive and sculptural. It’s an approach that’s likely the result of being mentored by Pancho Guedes and Aldo van Eyck, both members of the influential “Team X” group of architects who championed Structuralism, Brutalism and related urban planning in the ’60s and ’70s.

It’s one of the reasons the Rowan Lane houses are often considered Adèle and Tony’s best work in South Africa. Leading international architectural historian Kenneth Frampton has been attributed as describing the houses as “the best late modern houses I have ever (not) seen”.

The design consists of five adjoining compact row houses, each uniquely responding to the topography and vegetation of its site. The significance of the Rowan Lane buildings lies not only in the architectural merit of each but also in their relationship to one another. In a recent interview, Adèle said, “I have never dropped the idea that building and landscape had a wonderful reciprocity.” From the street, the five houses appear as an ensemble of white masses, stepping up and down, with a few curves thrown in. The roofs were planted (possibly a Cape Town first), and existing mature trees were retained to allow the client to look over the five houses she built for her children without spoiling the view. The roofs were originally planted with kikuyu lawns, but their invasive roots soon destroyed the waterproofing. Today, three out of five owners have reinstated the green roofs, this time opting for fynbos.

I LOVE THEM BECAUSE…

The design embodies Aldo van Eyck’s metaphor: “Tree is leaf and leaf is tree – house is city and city is house – a tree is a tree but is also a huge leaf – a leaf is a leaf but is also a tiny tree – a city is not a city unless it is also a huge house – a house is a house only if it is also a tiny city.” Each house is made of the same kit of parts, assembled slightly differently depending on site conditions – and when analysed geometrically, it becomes clear that they were working with strict proportioning systems. There’s a mathematical rhythm running through the entire design.

THE STATE OF PLAY TODAY

Many of the mature trees around which the houses were designed remain today, including the beautiful magnolia at the entrance to No. 2. The lane is a neighbourhood favourite, attracting nannies with toddlers from the surrounding area to ride bikes, play ball and hang out. There is something powerful about placing the front door of each house right on the street – a stark contrast to the usually paranoid South African context, where the desire is often for separation.

Living in No. 5 has been an extraordinary privilege for our family. I find myself marvelling at the beauty and tranquillity of the spaces, and the way the house flows seamlessly between the inside and outside. When I asked my eight- year-old daughter what she loved most about our home, she said it was like “taking a walk in nature”.

The unique geometry of the site and the five pre-existing maple trees led the architects to create a rhythmic, curved, glazed courtyard. In a masterful move, the house turns back on itself where the ramped staircase almost touches

the corner of the bedroom wing. Every room is visually connected to the garden. The emphasis on the human experience, designed from the inside out to facilitate life in such a delightful way, is a feat that very few architects can match, even 50 years later. In Adele’s words, “I never start from the outside inwards. I always start from the experience of people. The light, the views, the form of space itself… Starting with the notion of the human experience. Through the process of making life within whatever structure you’re creating, that’s where the poetry comes.”

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ARCHITECTS?

Both went on to have illustrious careers in the US. Adèle became the dean of architecture and planning at MIT, while Antonio became a professor of architecture, and founding director of the interdisciplinary Master of Infrastructure Planning programme at the New Jersey School of Architecture. Both also continued to practise architecture, making significant contributions to architectural education and research. santosprescott.com | opencity.co.za

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Join architect Brian McKechnie on a journey through 1930s Johannesburg as we continue our series on South Africa’s most iconic buildings. This time we visit an Art Deco jewel – the Ansteys Building.

Last night, I dreamt of downtown Johannesburg. The dream stretched out across acres of grey, a mirage of thousands of square concrete paving blocks – crooked, marked with pieces of chewing gum and mottled by tens of thousands of footprints. Frantic blurs of colour enveloped me – trousers, skirts, shoes, shopping bags, all offset against the concrete. The pavers began to chart a meticulously scaled map of the city centre.

An enormous living page of graph paper, anchoring urban intersections, movement and latent possibility. The dream felt like late afternoon; the sun’s rays hung long and low, heavy with that particular Highveld luminosity. I close my eyes again; the image ascends above the street and the city haze calms. A lone edifice emerges, suspended above the fever, ethereal. Ansteys.

The basics

Ansteys is located at the corner of Rahima Moosa (formerly Jeppe) and Joubert Street in downtown Joburg. The 1936 design was penned by Emley and Williamson Architects as the flagship location for the famous Norman Anstey and Company department store. The skyscraper sits atop an elegantly curved podium, clad in green terrazzo with ribbon window bands. Two ziggurat- shaped towers rise above the base, with cylindrical glazed windows at their intersection. The towers – topped by a dramatic Art Deco flag mast – accommodated offices for the store, as well as lavish penthouses on the top levels.

Not many people know that…

At a time when Johannesburg was obsessed with being the most modern, up-to-date and luxurious city, Ansteys was the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere. Playwright, activist and secret uMkhonto we Sizwe member Cecil Williams kept a penthouse on the 16th floor. When Nelson Mandela was captured by apartheid police in Howick in August 1962, he was travelling the country posing as Williams’s driver.

At its zenith

The department store was famed for its artful window displays, carefully curated behind plate glass-and-chrome shopfronts, which were curved to avoid reflections from car headlights. Evening strollers could marvel at the latest fashions from Paris and London after dining at the Carlton or an evening of theatre at His Majesty’s. The fourth floor housed a tea terrace, where waiters in tan suits and red sashes attended white-gloved ladies, while models – known as “mannequins” – discreetly presented the threads on sale in the store below. The building’s careful design provided upper-floor residences with ample sunlight, views and airy, spacious interiors. Select penthouses included floor-to-ceiling bay windows and linear balconies, opening out to sweeping vistas across the city, past golden mine dumps to distant rocky ridges.

The state of play today

The decline of high-street shopping and exodus of capital from the city centre left Ansteys with an uncertain future. After a failed bid for demolition, the building was donated to the National Monuments Council, and sectionalised in 1994, providing the first affordable inner-city housing in Joburg. At the close of the 20th century, it again became a pioneering development – no longer the tallest or most luxurious in Africa, but rather a place where people of all races and different incomes could own a home in a much-loved heritage monument in the heart of the city. Today, the building accommodates a diverse array of residents, from professionals to clothing designers, artists and ordinary inner-city families.

Why the building matters

Almost 90 years after its opening, Ansteys remains a design icon. Its resilience is testament to the enduring quality of good design.

We love it because…

Ansteys is one of South Africa’s most recognisable Art Deco structures – a steadfast anchor and an enduring monument to the faded glamour of the once Golden City.

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Reprising lessons from local and international Modernist masterpieces, this home creates a unique sense of place in the winelands sun.

A family affair is how architect Bettina Woodward describes the design of this Stellenbosch house. And it quite literally is. Bettina is the principal architect at her practice Open City, and she designed the house for (and with) her brother Roland Andrag, sister-in-law Juandi and their family.

Roland and Bettina grew up in a modernist home. Their German-immigrant grandparents had a house full of original Mid-century design and, says Bettina, “My parents were very interested in modern and abstract art. My mother always pushed radical ideas.” Bettina has subsequently restored a spectacular 1970s modernist home in Cape Town, and is fascinated with the rich vein of regional Modernism in and around Stellenbosch, created by the likes of architects Pius Pahl (who studied at the Bauhaus), Gawie Fagan and Revel Fox.

Roland and Juandi lived in a “typical Mid-century Modern house” in Stellenbosch before building this one. Add to this their love of pioneering US Mid-century architect Richard Neutra – they once went on a road trip visiting some of his iconic houses in California – and it was inevitable that what would emerge from this family affair would be an homage to Modernism. Roland and Juandi had found this site in their neighbourhood a few years prior – chosen for the views more than anything else. “We have a clear view of Table Mountain and of the Stellenbosch Mountain to one side,” says Juandi.

Of course, when it came to designing their house, they made sure not just to frame those views, but also to orient the house in a way that would help manage the sun, and provide passive heating and cooling. Its clean-lined, horizontal form faces north. The upper level is lifted on columns – “pilotis” in modernist parlance – to catch the views while letting the outside flow in underneath, especially when the sliding doors are open. Deep overhangs and pergolas (and some strategically planted trees), particularly to the west, are precisely proportioned to keep the direct sun out in summer and let it in during winter.

In the Neutra tradition, the distinction between landscape and architecture is blurred; in some instances, the garden is quite literally invited in with built- in planters, notably in the entrance hall and on the terraces. Bettina says the home is designed to “embed itself ” in its setting. “It’s not a small house,” she adds, “but I wanted to move away from the current situation where many new homes are over-scaled.” There’s a cosiness and modesty in the proportions of even the grandest modernist buildings.“What I love about Modernism is how everything is ergonomically the correct size.”

She strove to recapture that sense of human scale and comfort here. The living area may be large and open-plan, but there are opportunities to be “apart together”. Built-in furnishings – from the breakfast nook in the kitchen to the benches, window seats, bookshelves and desks – not only reprise a classic feature of Mid-century design, but also deftly balance togetherness and privacy. Some other “typical Neutra tricks”, as Bettina calls them, include his trademark “displaced corners” – or, as she explains, the “idea of taking the structure from the inside through to the outside”. In the family room upstairs there’s a beam that starts inside and continues out onto the terrace, simultaneously framing the garden. In the same way, the fascia in the main bedroom extends beyond the edge of the overhang, leading the eye outwards to the view.

The interiors have a Mid-century flavour, with a twist. There’s lots of beautiful timber detailing, bespoke cabinetry by Wolfgang Kretschmer of Blackbird Interiors, and terrazzo floors (another favourite of the era), but in this instance with quartz and mother-of-pearl in the aggregate, so that they shimmer.“Much of the colour palette was drawn from the sunsets, which range from pink, light orange and purple to all the darker shades,” says Juandi.

Neutra was influenced by Japanese architecture, and Roland and Juandi travelled to Japan for inspiration, too. (The kimonos exhibited outside her studio are among her mementoes; Juandi is a fashion designer and her label, Mantua Silkwear, has a dedicated wing in the house.) The distinctive green is something they picked up there. “I tried to repeat that colour scheme in the garden,” says Juandi, “making use of various orange and purple plants, with grey plants in between.” She worked with landscape architect Vikki Crawley of Verdigris Consulting on the design of the garden.“We didn’t want the garden to be too formal,” she says. “We wanted it to hold the house loosely.”

Despite its strong Mid-century influences and its joyful homage to the likes of Neutra, this house remains highly personal. At the same time, it’s very much about conjuring a spirit of its place, doing what this kind of architecture does best: connecting people and place harmoniously, uniquely and with a sense of serenity | opencity.co.za.

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A smart revamp of classic 1973 Pretoria apartments shows how cool high-density living can actually be.

In late 2019, architect Nadine Engelbrecht was approached by the owner of a low-rise apartment complex in the popular Pretoria suburb of Lynnwood with an interesting brief: to both renovate the existing flats and considerably add to the number of residential units on the property. Hillensberg, originally completed in 1973 to a design by architects Ivan Sive and May von Langenau, was at that point a set of two rows of three-bedroom apartments – 36 in all – with two rows of lockable garages in between the buildings containing the residential units.

Nadine relished the design challenge intrinsic to the brief because, she says, “I always find additions to old buildings fascinating. How do you reconcile old and new? Do you contrast them, or make the new blend into the old? How do you ensure that you respect the existing architecture?” Her client “wanted to maximise the potential of the site while maintaining the character, privacy and greenery that originally drew him to the apartments”, she explains.

Nadine’s ingenious design solution was to build 27 new two-bedroom apartments on top of the existing garages – hence the name she has given to the project: In Between 1973. By going this route, nothing has been added to the existing built footprint, allowing maximum green space to remain in the finished project. And as the name “In Between 1973” suggests, the design pays homage to the best of what the existing buildings had to offer, while also successfully updating them structurally and seamlessly adding new units whose aesthetic chimes beautifully with them.

The project commenced in January 2020, and after considerable delays resulting from the pandemic, was completed in May 2022. “Getting the old buildings up to today’s standards was the biggest challenge,” says Nadine. For example, the floor levels of the existing parking garages (beneath the new residential units) had to be lowered, “because today’s larger cars don’t fit into the 1973 parking spaces”, she says with a smile. And, of course, as additional apartments were being placed on top of them, there were structural strength issues to consider. “New structural supports were added to ensure safety and increase the overall lifespan,” Nadine says.

The existing buildings were brought up to date in terms of contemporary standards, too. “We had to add fire-compliance measures, replace glass with safety glass, and replace the electrical and plumbing connections,” she says. The overall design of the original buildings remained unaltered, however. The facades were tidied up as required, and some changes were made to the interiors, where internal walls were removed to transform the separate kitchen, dining and living areas into spacious, open-plan living zones that “allow more light to flow into the units, increase connectivity, and optimise circulation,” says Nadine. Electric geysers were replaced with more efficient gas versions, and services and fittings were updated throughout – but the parquet floors and full-height steel doors were retained and restored to their original beauty. “The 1973 apartments had an openness to them,” Nadine says. “They had large windows, views and such a calm neighbourhood feel, with garden spaces and large trees.”

When it came to creating the new units, the deep- yellow face brick of the original buildings could not be used again because of the closure of the quarry that had produced it. Nadine instead chose to use a black face brick that would generate contrast against the existing facades. Similarly, steel roof sheeting deployed as vertical cladding on the top floor of the new structures reflects the shingled sides of the existing buildings. And finally, existing interior elements were echoed in the new design, via the use of high ceilings and full-height aluminium-and-glass sliding doors.

“I love that even though we increased the density and added completely new buildings, the old and new apartments still have the same feeling of spaciousness,” says Nadine. To meet the increased need for privacy, timber sliding screens and large trees were installed; these also help to maintain the suburban feel of the original development. In addition, reclaimed materials were used wherever possible. Existing paving was reinstated after construction work was completed, and old bricks and pavers were reused to construct internal walls, too.

All this makes the project a model for smart, aesthetically pleasing and sustainable domestic architecture – and a useful example of how to meet South Africa’s need for urban densification, especially in existing suburban areas. The apartments were placed on the market individually after construction was completed, and sold out within three months. “Several of the previous tenants purchased apartments,” says Nadine. “I think people realised that the upgrade was necessary, and could see that the additions both respect the existing buildings and add value to the neighbourhood.” | nadineengelbrecht.co.za

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Veld Architects’ Gillian Holl was recently introduced to the architectural wonders of Dombeya, built by artist Alexis Preller, when she was called on by its new owners to help restore some of the buildings. In this instalment of our popular series that celebrates landmark local buildings, she takes us through the story of the almost-mythical complex – and the two men who conjured it.

The Basics

Over the 20 or so years that the visionary 20th century artistic icon Alexis Preller lived at Dombeya, his smallholding near Brits, he almost always had a new building project on the go. From the mid-1950s onwards, Preller constructed a complex of buildings that in the end included his house and studio, a guesthouse, a swimming pool and changing room, and his swan song – a remarkable gallery/museum space known as the Mudhif.

A vaulted brick building inspired by the giant arched grass structures made by the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, the Mudhif was a tribute to Preller’s devoted friend, the architect Norman Eaton, who died in 1966 after a car accident, and left much of his collection of art and artefacts to Preller. The Mudhif was intended to house Eaton’s collection.

Eaton and Preller shared an appreciation for design from all over Africa, from local Ndebele architecture
to the art and design they encountered further afield. They travelled extensively throughout the continent, and their mutual interests and ideas found expression in both Eaton’s architecture and Preller’s art. The two men, in turn, also influenced each other.

Preller’s paintings were filled with myth, symbolism and cosmology, veering from the surreal to the abstract. Dedicated to making an art of Africa, he once said that his aim was “to identify myself with my age and place: Africa, and the 20th century”. His buildings at Dombeya were a manifestation of that artistic ambition, too.

Eaton was a similarly solitary figure. Architectural historian Clive Chipkin describes him as “a remote figure outside the hurly-burly of general practice”. Preller described his work as having “an African quality”, which is now understood as a rare, pioneering example of a uniquely African language of “regional Modernism”. His use of carvings, mosaics and intricate brick patterning blurred the distinction between architecture and decoration.

At its Zenith

After buying an empty expanse of subdivided farmland with views of the Magaliesberg, Preller started building at Dombeya in October 1956. “With some advice from Norman Eaton, he designed a very basic house: a large single room for living, working, eating and sleeping, with glass doors on the south side looking out on the Dombeya tree,” writes Esmé Berman, coauthor of Alexis Preller: A Visual Biography. A few years later, when he received the commission to paint a mural for the Transvaal Provincial Administration building in Pretoria, Preller had to build a new studio big enough to house the canvasses.

In 1966, he began planning architectural additions again, including a guesthouse. This time, he took inspiration from Eaton’s creative use of brickwork. The new guest suite not only features one of those amazing mosaic floors, but also a mural by Erich Frey (who was actually a jeweller) made with rectangular copper sheets designed to catch the light – sunlight by day, candlelight by night. In 1970, Preller added a swimming pool and the conical changing-room tower (which looked a lot like the structures he’d been painting for years). Eventually, in 1974, he began building the Mudhif, the museum/gallery he had envisioned to house the Eaton collection, and which would incorporate a pair of carved wooden doors that Eaton had brought back from Zanzibar. The building was never finished, although its shell and another staggering mosaic floor were completed.

In December 1975, Preller went into hospital for an operation, where he unfortunately passed away. He was buried at Dombeya alongside his partner, Guna Massyn. The property was sold in 1977.

The State of Play Today

Dombeya’s new owners are in discussion with Veld Architects about the restoration of the remaining buildings in the complex. Some have been altered beyond recognition, but the guesthouse, the studio and the Mudhif – including the magnificent floors – are intact. Even the changing room next to the swimming pool is still standing.

Why the Building Matters

Its place in local art and architectural history alone makes it significant. The stories that swirl around this place are still told and retold in art auction catalogues whenever important Preller works appear for sale. Eaton’s legacy is much better appreciated now, and questions about climate, landscape, materials, culture and identity that he began exploring all those years ago are front of mind for architects once again. As the epicentre of Preller and Eaton’s intellectual and artistic collaborations, Dombeya embodies a unique intersection between African identity and modernity.

Not Many People Know that…

The Zanzibar doors originally intended for the Mudhif now belong to another artist and academic (and notable Preller expert), Professor Karel Nel. After Preller’s and Massyn’s deaths, the doors were auctioned off. Years later, Nel went to great lengths to track them down, and had them incorporated into his own Dombeya-inspired, barrel-vaulted house and studio – which he named Mudhif.

We Love it Because

In Preller’s foreword to Norman Eaton: Architect, he concluded: “With him, magic and reality and truth were absolutes; interchangeable, and, very often, one.” He could be describing Dombeya. The incredible decorative details – the floors and murals! – are an integral part of an overarching vision here, not an add-on. Craft, construction and architecture are one. To have the opportunity to restore it and bring it back to its former glory is beyond exciting.

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The new building for the Hasso Platner D-School Afrika at UCT is both a product of design thinking and a space to facilitate it.

It seems that German billionaires have a knack for adding landmarks to Cape Town’s architectural landscape. First there was former Puma (now Harley-Davidson) CEO Jochen Zeitz and the Zeitz MOCAA. Now, the Hasso Plattner Foundation – set up by the founder of software company SAP, Hasso Plattner – has funded the HPI d-school building, home to the Hasso Plattner School of Design Thinking Afrika (d-school Afrika for short), at the University of Cape Town.

While the Zeitz MOCAA might be described as iconic, lead architect Jonathan Ray from KMH Architects, who designed the d-school building, describes their intention as “iconographic”. By this he means that, although there are undeniably some eye-catching elements in the new building – not least the glass lattice canopy that sweeps all the way down to the ground – its aesthetic articulates how the building works rather than just looking design-y.

“We wanted to make the way in which the building was made apparent,” says Jonathan. “So, for example, one of the wonderful things about the lattice shell structure is you can see how it works. There’s no artifice. You see every single beam; you see how it all connects. The aesthetic and how it works are the same.” This is something of an analogy for what design thinking is, and what d-school Afrika does, decoupling the creative magic embedded in design disciplines, and demystifying and democratising it.

Richard Perez, founding director of d-school Afrika, explains that “design thinking” is an idea that gained traction in the US in the early 2000s among various other approaches to “creative problem-solving”. He explains that these skills are commonly taught in design schools, but as an inherent part of their discipline, be it graphic design, product design or architecture. Apart from the things that designers design, however, there is also huge value, he explains, “in the thinking process that gets you to the end object”.

“If you look at how your brain is being wired behind those activities, that is what we teach,” says Richard. And that mind-set can be applied to other contexts – anything from healthcare to housing or financial-services solutions.

d-school Afrika is the third design-thinking school in the world, the first two being at Stanford University in the US, and in Potsdam in Germany. d-school Afrika has been running from a space at UCT’s Graduate School of Business at the V&A Waterfront since 2015. As Richard says, after its initial success, he realised that to have a meaningful presence in Africa, d-school Afrika needed its own place. Luckily, the Hasso Plattner Foundation agreed, and the plan to build a dedicated home began.

While d-school Afrika’s predecessors in the US and Germany had developed a unique approach to space planning, both were housed in existing buildings. The d-school at UCT was the first opportunity to manifest design-thinking principles in a new building. Jonathan says they noticed early in their research that the triangular hill site on which the school has been built was empty, but it was a busy thoroughfare for students moving between campuses. KMH integrated those routes into the building, drawing them under its canopy-like structure and making the building part of the university community. Its tent- like span is a deliberate attempt to build flexibility into the design, so that the interior is easy to reconfigure. The light-filled atrium also helps resolve the tricky geometries of the site and the need for some regular, linear rooms.

Given the ethos of the school, the building also pushes the envelope as far as the challenges of sustainability go, including through the use of cutting-edge technology such as the Thermally Activated Building Structure (TABS).

As d-school Afrika takes residence in its new home, it is a space waiting to have its potential realised, to unlock the possibilities of design thinking. “It almost says to you, you have the right to think differently,” says Richard – which seems a good place to start.

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Ever wondered who inspired our current generation of architects? For Gillian Holl, the founder of Veld Architects, the pure form of Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel and the monumentality of Gaudí’s Sagrada Família have both informed her sustainability-centred approach to design.

If Gillian Holl’s parents had had their way, their daughter would have become an optometrist. “But all I kept thinking about was designing creative frames,” she says from her office at Veld Architects’ HQ in Lanseria. “I grew up in the platteland, and wasn’t really exposed to many professions. It’s only when I went to write an aptitude test at RAU and chatted to people there that I realised architecture could be an option. Life happened to me.”

The only child of a mining engineer and a teacher, Gillian moved around a lot as a child due to her father’s job, but always lived in relatively rural towns across the Free State, North West and Gauteng. “My childhood was very grounded in nature,” says Gillian. “We hiked a lot and visited many game reserves. We also had family with farms in North West, where I’d often visit and help to herd cattle. Nature is still one of the biggest influences in my work today.”

The intersection between culture and architecture is another driving force behind the work that Gillian
does at Veld, which she founded in 2003. It’s an ethos that crystallised in the years following her studies – first, in optometry at the former Rand Afrikaans University; then, in architecture at the University of Pretoria. In London, she worked on social housing for a small architectural firm, then saved up to visit all the great masters’ landmarks, from the Pantheon and the Acropolis to the works of Antoni Gaudí, Le Corbusier and Frank Gehry. “By experiencing life and immersing yourself in different cultures, you learn to understand the importance of context, and buildings’ relationship to that,” says Gillian. “The minimalism of Mies van der Rohe’s pavilion in Barcelona is relevant there; but here, not so much. When I returned to South Africa, I had more of an appreciation for our unique context, and the thing that stood out for me is that we’re more of a community.”

Gillian describes her design approach as the result of a gradual layering of architectural principles that have resonated with her over the years: the pure, organic form of the Afrikaans Language Monument in Paarl; the masterful use of concrete and light in Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp chapel; the level of detailing in Charles Rennie MacKintosh’s Glasgow School of Art; and the originality and sense of daring of Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona. “Gaudí’s work is extraordinary for its time; he wasn’t stuck in convention,” she says. “Sagrada has the playful nature of kids building sandcastles. It’s this monumental building that takes your breath away. And I see nature in that.”

One of the most recent manifestations of Gillian’s divergent influences can be found at Veld’s House Amani, which made the shortlist of the 2022 World Architecture Festival in Lisbon. Set on a farm in Lanseria, the residence is characterised by its raw materiality. Imposing slabs of off-shutter concrete are complemented by feature walls of clay brick, Corten steel, rammed earth and Gabion cages filled with rocks from the site. It’s also a showcase of what sustainable building can be.

“The sustainability of off-shutter concrete in architecture is a controversial issue – but, as is the case with Ronchamp, once the structure is built, it never needs to be painted,” says Gillian. Corten steel was also chosen because the steel alloy has been specifically developed to eliminate the need for painting, and weathers into a rusted patina. The result is a building that embraces its landscape.

House Amani saw Gillian collaborating with a host of artists, craftsmen and artisanal workers, and this human touch is evident at every turn. Bespoke double-glazed stained-glass windows by Cutting Edge Glass project a meditative kaleidoscope of light into the interior; an installation of rocks collected by Gillian and her team from the building site hangs suspended over the dining- room table; and a wall of specially designed breeze blocks by Wolkberg Casting Studios incorporates trelliswork made of repurposed poaching snares by Down to the Wire.

“It makes sense for architecture to unite the arts by creating an umbrella for other craftsmen to exhibit their work and get the opportunity to make a living,” says Gillian. “We have to consider ways in which we can make architecture sustainable not only for the environment, but also for the community around it.

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