On the urban fringe of the Bo Kaap sit two houses and, although they are not located in the Bo Kaap historical context, they still borrow much of their referencing from the area. The language is a typical ”Georgian” box form, small-scale and brightly coloured, and the houses respond politely and positively to the street.
One house is the renovation of an existing house the other is new, and the buildings distinguish themselves from each other by colour and simple articulation. The design concept stems from the need for an appropriate response to the cultural and historical context of the area and making the most of the extraordinary views of the V&A Waterfront, Table Mountain and city from this edge of Signal Hill.
The two houses share a party wall so are, effectively, row houses, but are designed to appear as distinctly separate houses within their urban context. Each of the internal functions is contained within a separate box and the design responds to the windy climate by arranging these boxes around an internal, protected courtyard that turns its back on the wind and opens its face to the sun. Swimming pools are discretely placed in sunny spots, within the private courts, respecting the dominant Muslim neighbourhood's precepts .
The distinct boxes overlap in section creating and complex interlocking and intentionally ambiguous spacial inter-connectivity between rooms and the 11 different levels in the house allow for free-flow communication between spaces. This very complex layering system in section composes unexpected glimpses of the garden, mountain and sky from any space and results in a tremendous feeling of connectedness between dweller and place.
The site is two small 300m2.m erven and the constraints of this established surrounding fabric become the prospects as slivers of diagonal views are opened up by the building code setbacks. These views are capitalized and become fixed views corridors to the landscape beyond.
The project’s major challenge was trying to get a lot of house onto such a small site without the buildings becoming over-scaled and ostentatious. The budget was also a significant challenge so the technology had to be simple. As with all low budgets, it was challenging to achieve a minimal look and feel without the buildings coming across as unfinished.
The project’s success has been recognized in the positive responses it has received from a variety of different people. The politeness and discretion of the houses, in an area where many new projects are ostentatious and showy, has resulted in the houses receiving special Heritage Status Grading by the Heritage Authorities at CoCT as exemplary urban infill within a historical and culturally rich environment.