COMPILED BY Gina Dionisio PHOTOS Dook; Henrique Wilding; Greg Cox/Frank features; Adam Loch; Paris Brummer; Elsa Young; Kyle Morland; Warren Heath/Offices
As we head into 2024, we need to combine some of the most-read features in VISI this year. From luxury retreats to ultra-modern beach houses, here’s a look at your 15 favorite spaces of 2023 (and check out our 2022). and 2021 favorites as well).
As in most coastal locations, the ever-changing weather governs most activity here. When the VISI team visited to photograph this Pringle Bay house, our shoot began in peaceful sunshine at low tide, with the sea calm, and breathtakingly clear visibility right across False Bay. Then, as the tide came in and waves began crashing onto the rocks, a rainstorm crossed the bay, washing the crisp vista clean away and instead creating a dramatic, moody outlook.
Accordingly, this home is designed to suit all of these possibilities: it’s equipped with everything that might be required for indoor cocooning, as well as a glazed sea-facing facade that maximises the views no matter the weather conditions. The north-facing glass facade also opens up onto a generous deck, with a new all-natural swimming pool – built in a location-appropriate, raised “plaasdam” style – in the foreground.
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The barn was intended to be a greenhouse. Located next to the main apartment of owners Jochem and Evi Elsner in Yzerfontein, the initial concept to build Evi’s dream emerged: a greenhouse, a vegetable lawn and a bird coop next to her house. “When the land became available, we thought, ‘Let’s buy it and build it, before someone else does, and build something ugly next to us,'” Evi says.
Originally from Germany but having lived in South Africa for more than 20 years, Jochem and Evi’s prior address was in Somerset West. “We loved living there, but over the years it became too busy and built up,” Evi explains. “About seven years ago, we decided we wanted to move somewhere else, and Yzerfontein was the place to be. We had it on good authority from friends, and from the many photographers we know, that it was an idyllic location – beautiful and uncrowded. We visited the area and were sold immediately.”
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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.
They had initially purchased a deserted former tennis court in the seaside town with the goal of building it, but the prospect of a brick and mortar structure within two years led them to purchase a former one-bedroom prefabricated space in the seaside town. “We initially saw it as a transitional home that would allow us to remain in Scarborough while we oversee the structure, but we ended up loving the space so much that we made it our home. “
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Compact and low maintenance were two key words in the presentation to architect Andrew Payne before the design of this commission began. The owners, a South African couple of Greek descent with two young men, had to leave the extensive space in which they lived. “Owners were tired of being slaves to their spaces; it required a lot of maintenance and they realized they were spending a third of their time on it at most,” says Andrew, founder and managing director of Drew Architects. They were looking for something that would better suit their desires as a family and, more importantly, a position where they wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time and money to support her. “
After locating an acre of land in Greenfields, which they then subdivided, the couple first contacted Miguel Simoes of Vestim Construction, the contractor for their former home, and asked him to be a component of the project. Miguel’s only condition for being able to choose architects on site was when he contacted Drew Architects.
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Nestled in the middle of Fresnaye and Sea Point Drive, and wedged between a mix of outdated apartments, the same trendy buildings, and a glut of advertising entities, is The Flamingo. As with all structures designed by common architects Robert Silke.
Commissioned through Signatura, with whom Robert has painted before, the purpose was to create something compact and fun. “They came to us because they knew our paintings and they knew that we would offer them something absolutely different from what is being built in this field. “The main objective of the progression was to be able to offer modern, interesting and totally independent micro-apartments, basically aimed at holiday rentals and the Airbnb market. “
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You know, I’ve counted every single brick in this space,” says architect Adèle Naudé Santos with a smile, as she looks around the master bedroom of the first space she designed: a four-bedroom wrought-iron modernist apartment completed in 1967. and situated on a narrow, tree-lined street in Kenilworth, Cape Town.
Maybe I’m not kidding. Its modular design, visible through the whitewashed unplastered walls, means that in all likelihood the dimensions of the space can also be measured brick by brick. Adele, founded in the United States, is arguably a world-renowned architect today, but at the time she was just beginning her career and this was her first construction. And as if the stakes weren’t enough, the consumer was his father, the late architect Hugo Naudé.
“My father didn’t need me to be an architect because he didn’t think it was a woman’s job,” says Adèle. “When I graduated in first elegance in my third year at UCT, he told me it was time to move on. So I went to London to finish my studies at the Architectural Association.
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“I imagined myself as a city woman, until I went through lockdown in Scarborough,” says South African director Nicole Ackermann. That this small seaside town right next to Cape Town’s Cape Point Nature Reserve is now their home has become a marvel. for her as it has been for her circle of family and friends. A place with strong winds and incredibly calm waters, its rugged look isn’t for everyone. However, it struck a chord with globetrotting Nicole as soon as she arrived. This has particularly repositioned my perspective and values. Until then, I had been looking for inspiration on the outside, now I realize the importance of looking further inside.
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.”
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As many couples have done during the pandemic, Lauren Shantall and her husband Derek Eyden have reevaluated their lifestyle. To overcome the claustrophobia of their new paint-from-home regime, Lauren, who runs her own PR firm, and musician Derek hopped in the car with their 13-year-old son Daniel and drove from Rosebank, in the center of Cape Town’s suburbs, to the Deep South — the colloquial name for the chain of slow-paced suburbs that line the Cape Peninsula’s seashore. We woke up 3 or 4 times a week to swim at dawn,” says Lauren. “Covid made me suddenly lose 40% of my business, but it also allowed me to paint from anywhere. We learned that we could just minimize our fuel bill and move to the ocean! »
The mid-century prairie-style space the couple ended up buying at Fish Hoek isn’t exactly their architectural dream, but its mountaintop location, with perspectives of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, is one of those 1960s box spaces, where you open the front door and step into a rectangle. Lauren says. “Derek and I knew pretty well what we wanted to do. We measured the space, made small-scale drawings and cut out furniture that we moved, looking for infinite configurations.
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The Colemans are not your average suburbanites – although chatting to the humble Audrey Coleman, now 90, you wouldn’t guess it. She and her late husband, Max, were active human-rights advocates during the apartheid years, both working for the Detainees’ Parents Support Committee, with Audrey also a long-standing and celebrated member of the legendary human- rights organisation, Black Sash.
The Coleman House also has a lot of credibility. Built in the early 1980s, it is a masterpiece of white lines and geometric shapes and, custom designed to serve as a retirement home for its owners, it is also a piece of South African design history. “Our son Colin was a student at Wits University and we insisted that Pancho Guedes be the sole user for the work,” says Audrey about the choice of the architect.
Amâncio d’Alpoim Miranda “Pancho” Guedes was a famed architect, artist and educator, and head of the school of architecture at Wits. Born in Portugal, he spent most of his life in Mozambique. It’s difficult to sum up such an important figure in African Modernist architecture, but there is no doubt he pushed boundaries. Known for his sculptural and well-thought-out buildings, Guedes was inspired by surrealism, African art and Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, whose work motivated him to experiment, as well as by pioneers of Modernism in Brazil, like Affonso Reidy and Oscar Niemeyer.
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One can simply deduce that the dome-shaped column that marks Pine Concrete House is a poetic homage to Paarl Rock, the gigantic granite outcrop that rises in the background. ” You’ll have to communicate to my father the metaphors of this house,” says Johannes Berry, co-founder of Brussels-based architecture firm Sugiberry with a smile along with his wife Mayu Takasugi in 2016.
Fortuitous as the architectural echo is, the concrete-and-wood residence’s design was informed by a set of logical principles that Johannes and Mayu work according to,rather than any visual reference.“We like to consider the potential in what already exists,” he explains. In the case of Pine Concrete House, what existed was the double-storey home of Johannes’s parents, Roland and Elmine. “The initial brief from them was to build a double garage – but like most projects, it grew,” says Johannes. “They’re getting older, and because of the size of their house, we proposed renovating it so it could ultimately be split into three self-contained parts – a top half, a bottom half and an extension – so they’d still be able to live there, but rent out the two other spaces.”
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Located on Monaghan Farm in Lanseria, in a lovely spot overlooking a bend in the Jukskei River, this space is a bold, brutalist architectural idea, but the result is an incredibly sophisticated and delicate reaction to its surroundings. Owners Wendy and Lukas van Niekerk were looking for a space made entirely of metal and raw exposed concrete, and this stunning plot presented them with the opportunity to build from the ground up. Lukas, an engineer, is a great admirer of the paintings of 20th-century Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, known for his delicate use of concrete, as well as his experiments with concrete and metal, and the Van Niekerks’ architect Enrico Daffonchio, He went to school in Scarpa’s hometown of Venice, Italy. The destinies had aligned.
Despite what Enrico calls their “strong architectural language,” the space they designed together is nestled in the landscape and, seen from the most sensitive part of the hill, is virtually invisible (aided by green roofs planted with endemic grasses to recreate the landscape). ). is built on top of it). It is literally embedded in the landscape thanks to its unobtrusive presence.
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I think the sunset convinced him,” says architect Vedhant Maharaj. The view from this home atop Parkview Ridge encompasses 270 degrees of the city’s urban forest and the sunsets are spectacular. The character of this unexpected modernist gem was buried under additions and modifications, adding a single-sloped metal roof placed on top. “But he had smart bones. Maybe you’ll just see it,” says Vedhant, who founded Rebel Base Collective, the multidisciplinary architecture and design studio, in 2017. A little research revealed that the space was designed in 1935 through a company called Small and Schaerer, which created several well-known spaces. Buildings in Johannesburg, adding the Central Fire Station. By the 1930s, they were known for “an eclectic modernist style, with irregularly spaced projecting balconies,” as described in an account of the architectural heritage database Artefacts. He also mentions that his designs “tend toward the picturesque,” a technique that emphasizes not only the elegant and formal appearance but also the sense of the sublime.
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At first glance, the Shaw House is brutally simple: a series of three-dimensional boxes, located side by side and in the most sensitive part of another on a long triangular site carved into one of the steep slopes that characterize Durban’s forested university suburb. exposed bricks, concrete, shuttered windows, shutters and some aluminum; There’s no shortage of paint, wallpaper, air conditioning, or even curtains.
The space is owned by Colleen Wygers, who lived here with her late husband, architect Paul Wygers. Sadly, Paul passed away shortly after we photographed the space; With Colleen’s permission, we have included her observations from this interview.
Paul liked to describe the space as a modernism transforming the space of Durban’s heritage conservatory and, when it hit the market in 2013, the couple bought it within hours of seeing it for the first time. Designed by Hallen and Dibb Architects in the 1960s, it was commissioned through legal luminaire Douglas Shaw. “Douglas Shaw sitting in an Eames chair in the living room,” Paul recalls. “We talked briefly about art and architecture. I don’t think he wanted to leave.
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If you’re ever asked to illustrate the Chinese concept of balanced dualism, you might do worse than throw a pin at them at 250 Buitengracht in Cape Town. Approach the front and find the façade of an old Victorian cottage, replete with a wraparound terrace shaded by a wide corrugated iron roof; however, turn the corner and go up Signal Hill, and the space unfolds into a whole. cool sheds. On the left is flanked by the thriving suburb of Tamboerskloof, and on the right the traditionally Malay region of Cape Bo-Kaap. Internally, the space is neatly divided into two independent two-story apartments, almost identical: one with Table Mountain perspectives, visual through a custom-made terrace; the other overlooks Carisbrook Street and beyond to Bo-Kaap and CBD.
“Our clients, Fred Durow and Ben Schoeman, are urban planners and purchased the assets with the concept of creating a dual opportunity to live and live from home, as well as the opportunity to generate rental income,” says Antony Abate, director of Team Arquitectos. “We sought to maximize the perspectives of the site, staying true to our ethos and ideals in terms of urban design, contextual fit, scale, and interaction with the streets,” Fred adds.
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Six years ago, while exploring a “potential art project” in the small town of Tulbagh in the Western Cape, Abigail Rands stumbled upon this remarkable building. Her family owns a nearby wine estate, so she feels a strong connection to the area; And besides, she says, “I love beautiful architecture, raw fabrics, and elegant art. ” And this space contained all three in batches.
It is one of the oldest buildings in the town – the first monastery and mission school established in 1797 – and its distinctive gables, thick whitewashed walls, wooden rafters and thatched roof were the very embodiment of traditional Cape Winelands architecture. More recently, however, the artist Christo Coetzee lived there from the 1970s until his death at the turn of the century. For a time afterwards, the house was a museum dedicated to his life and work.
“A friend of Christo’s took us around and told us stories about each artwork. Everything I took in that day stayed with me,” says Abigail – and it wasn’t long before she came back. This time, she’d had an idea: she wanted to turn the house into a retreat of sorts; a place where, as she puts it, “you can let go and connect with how you really feel”. Later, her vision came to include a yoga studio in the old monastery building (which had once served as Coetzee’s studio).
Net the full story, here.
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