Casa Paardeberg - Paarl

The Brief

A young couple building their dream family home in South Africa.

Spaces need to flow and the transition between indoors and outdoors to be seamless and almost invisable

The celebration of natural materials and the landscape

The Design

The site is located on a very steep hillside and thus needed to be cut into platforms to allow the building to sit on the site within a very tight height restriction.

The fantastic view to the South of the Paarl mountain and valley had to be celebrated. This lead to the big windows absorbing the views but a narrow footprint allowed the living areas to have sun from the North and view to the South.

The pool had to be North for heat but the client insisted they had to be able to see the view out of the pool. So this resulted in the massive 9m wide openings on either side of the living areas over the north and south timber decks.

Bedrooms are on the first floor with ample North sun exposure with a wide corridor and balcony to the south to allow an area to relax and enjoy the view rather than a stark passage for circulation only.

The use of materials and the fragmenting of the facades makes the scale of the building less imposing into the natural landscape and the landscaping of the garden was done in a very natural way to mimic the mountain behind.