Bridge For Design March 2015 Bridge For Design March 2015 | Page 107

D

esigner Anna Trzebinski’s house outside
Nairobi takes its cue from nature. From the
drive it is invisible, concealed in a grove of
indigenous olive and croton trees. Its structure
incorporates locally felled tree trunks – they
make handsome, gnarled columns on the verandas. Visually
as well as physically, it is part of the African bush. Anna
designed the house with her late husband, Tonio, an artist.
At the centre of a 250-acre forest reserve in Langata, it was
built 14 years ago by Tonio and a team of Kikuyu builders.
‘Once we found the plot, we camped here to learn the lie
of the land. The trees determined the size of the house,’ says
Anna. ‘Tonio stopped painting. He built it in eight months.

The men who helped him are still here, operating the woodwork
shop he started.’ Tonio died in 2001, and Anna closed the furnituredesign business for a year, before reopening it in 2003.
The ground floor of the house – a single, open-plan living space
flooded with light from French windows – provides the perfect
introduction. Like all the rooms it has a beamed ceiling and
wooden floor (olivewood in this case; upstairs floors are mahogany
or cedar wood). The walls are simply furnished with a plaster that
contains coloured pigment and lime, a traditional Swahili method
called niru. ‘The treatment is influenced by the stucco technique
used for centuries in Damascus, Venice, Oman and India,’ Anna
explains. ‘It changes colour according to the humidity in the air,
and the absorption and evaporation of moisture helps to keep the
rooms cool.’ Here the walls have been finished in shades of taupe –
a n