House Schalkwyk

Sector

Private

Location

Pretoria, South Africa

Year

2019

Design Team

Carlu Swart

Photographer

Tash Laurent

The songs of birds hang tangibly between the foliage of the indigenous tree canopy where light filters through the cool shaded air in beams of the misty haze.

The building was designed to, not only, disappear in the forest, but to reflect it in the windows thereby duplicating the perceived forest density. The “exoskeleton”, is a series of vertical steel sections that not only facilitates this directional transition but also carries the roof. The lightness, colour and repetition of this element provide a textured surface that fragments the monolith and camouflages the structure. The building form was informed, among other factors, by the location of the trees and the topography. The roof plane mimics the contours of the site below. The curved corners of the pods on plan reduce an abrupt change in directionality and soften the threshold between structure and forest.

The architectural issue of bridging the inherited dichotomous styles of the main house and outbuilding posed an interesting challenge. The main residence, constructed in a typical Tuscan style, which is adopted quite widespread in the more affluent neighbourhoods, contrasts the thatched roof outbuilding that is rooted in the traditional vernacular architecture of South Africa’s rural areas.

The architectural solution therefore not only faces this challenge in a site specific sense, but also, within the larger South African predicament. The question is therefore, how can architecture bridge this space? Here, the architectural response attempts to negotiate this dichotomy through the utilization of basic architectural tools such as scale, form, materials, textures and colour rather than the application of a similar, or other architectural style.