African Design Magazine October 2016 | Page 26

African project Swartberg House – South Africa

take advantage of the sun from the north , while large openings to the south enable views to the mountains .
By using the responsiveness of the structure to the environment to develop a poetic and material language for the building , along with the positioning and orientation of spaces towards the landscape , the house becomes inseparable from its context . It also allows nature and landscape to become part of the ephemeral materials of the house .
The layered volumes and spaces of the house have a loose structure that is intertwined with the loose structure of the landscape : the far hills of the Karoo and the peaks to the south . The stepped profile of the house against the landscapes of mountain and veld continually shifts from different viewpoints , allowing connections to be made between the context and the external form of the building . The appearance of the house alters as the shutters and large sliding doors are opened and closed in response to inhabitation and the environment .
The sectional variations of the internal spaces are reflected in the varying external forms of the house . The highest space , the living room , encloses a perfect cube , with ceiling heights at 5.7m . The height enables the room to vent through high level pivoting shutters ( operated from the first floor roof terrace ), which bring in cooling winds from the south . The first floor roof terraces allow for circulation around the raised volumes , while the uppermost terrace is located above the smaller ground floor bedroom , and looks to the west – to the town and the sunset .
The patterned brick-on-edge floors and roughcast plaster walls and ceilings are kept