The project is a family home in Simonstown completed in collaboration with design architect, Kevin Fellingham. 

The site lies within a conservation area, which finds its expression in design codes which imply long, low buildings with roofs running parallel to the slope and made out of materials sympathetic to the old town below. The local authority’s aesthetics committee has chosen to interpret these as a recipe for suburban faux Victoriana. 

The house is specific to its site.  It attempts to represents at all scales the place which it occupies. Its layered massing mirrors that of the site. It consists of a number of small buildings accessed by an alleyway, as in the older parts of Simonstown. The earth is retained by stone walls, as are the road cuttings climbing to the site. Stone walls also line one side of the historic Mile in the town centre. The relationship of cornice to coping is analogous to that of the Flat roofed old buildings in town; the termination of the cornice half way along the side façade is a reflection of the same detail in the police station. The paving and the climbing path find there echo in the cemetery by Roelof Uytenbogaardt. The clipped eaves of the roof are to be found in the Admirals house. The steel stairway is curved and grey like a piece of naval equipment. The barrel of the cannon on the high street points through a slotted steel plate at the slot in the parapet of the tower .The roof of the study is folded up to clear the top of Simonsberg in the view from the sofa. The corner window captures the long curve of the beach. The dining table is located perpendicular to the view so that everyone may enjoy it. 

All of these incidents are abstracted so as to subtlely enrich the very simple overall idea, which is to make a house between the mountain and the sea. The front of house frames the view over the bay, screening out the suburban context and pulling the horizon right into the house. The wall facing the view is half solid and half void, focussing the bedroom and sitting room inwards, and charging the view by preventing it becoming wallpaper. 

The house consists of four terraces cut into the scree slope of the Simonsberg and of three blocks and the spaces between themselves and the walls of the excavation. The first space is a forecourt, the second a terrace 4.5 metres wide, the third space is 300 mm wide, and forms a skylight bringing light into the centre of the plan on two levels. The fourth is a wild garden formed between the house and the mountain. 

The spaces of the house are domesticated through the use of built in furniture and sliding screens in the same way in which we would fit out a n old building for a new use - respecting the difference between what is structural and permanent and what is useful and subject to change of use.

The house exploits natural ventilation using the stair tower to draw air through the house from all levels. A careful study of the micro-climate was made in order to find a site sheltered from the cape winds with a variety of outdoor spaces ensuring there us always a quiet corner. The house references the old buildings of Simonstown in its colour, the simplicity and scale of the main rooms and its direct use of material and the use of square and golden section proportions, it is accessed up an alleyway like those of the old part of the town. The landscaping has been designed as if the house were a part of the hill, with restia on the flat roofs and fynbos retaining the slopes.  Text by Kevin Fellingham.