Mountain Home / Chris Van Niekerk
Textual content description offered by the architects. Situated on a 4000m2 website in a semi-rural location on the slopes of the Steenberg Mountains, this constructing is nestled in a fashion to recommend it’s neither elevated nor buried, straddling a central location on the positioning. An open temporary offered the liberty to discover a thought-about response to the panorama fairly than focus solely on the constraints of lodging. The positioning bears the scars of the presence of an earlier dwelling that was demolished resulting from structural failure. Additional manipulation of the positioning was restricted in order that this chapter within the website’s historical past is just not erased.
There are three elements that outline the physique of the brand new home, every distinct in its place and relationship to the opposite in addition to to the topography of the positioning. The elements are positioned in a U-shaped ‘embrace’, referring to the use and necessities of privateness and separation whereas responding to prevailing winds, photo voltaic orientation, and outward views. The primary construction, a modest visitor bed room and work space, seems to emerge from a slope on account of an prolonged backyard wall gently disappearing into the panorama. One other wall types the edges of a pool and stage aircraft, an un-programmed house for looking.
Hovering above and askew to this construction is a heavy concrete cover. The seemingly random relationship of this to the opposite constructions was loosely impressed by the rocky crest of the mountains behind the home, which has a fragmented, geometric high quality. It encloses and protects the second half, a big out of doors refuge from the solar and winds. From right here one can see as far outward as False Bay, but in addition by means of the home in direction of Desk Mountain to the north. This huge construction continues to the inside because the roof of a glazed dwelling house that celebrates mild and the panorama. A sudden step-down within the soffit on the threshold of dwelling and kitchen areas alerts the connection to the third half. The areas and light-weight listed below are modulated; one’s eyes modify to the subdued mild and are drawn to the gleaming metal surfaces of the kitchen. To the left, a smaller aperture requires one to pause and look out en path to the principle bed room.
The decrease stage is reached by a modest staircase linking the higher stage to the principle entrance of the home in response to the course of the light slope of the panorama. The areas listed below are totally different in character, extra introverted and enclosed. In utilizing restricted supplies with recognizable qualities of the earth, the problem was to realize an alchemy the place end and construction are one and the identical. This was doable by permitting every materials to be absolutely current with its inherent coloration and texture. Consequently, the complete construction reads as a homogenous physique in opposition to which the solar and seasons will render their results strongly because the construction ages.
The vegetation has been restored and augmented utilizing the indigenous flora of the world, a water-wise resolution to this not too long ago drought-stricken area of South Africa. Because it continues to develop and encompass the home, construction, and panorama turn out to be one, permitting the home to resonate with its panorama.
The which means of this challenge is derived from a primordial understanding of shelter and dwelling. By putting each the occupant and the surroundings on the middle of this dwelling, there may be an emphasis on the usage of easy and unadorned supplies, virtually as if these have been borrowed from the positioning to offer enclosure. This home advantages its homeowners by addressing the essential on a regular basis necessities and processes of life in a measured method.
