Pyramids in the Sky
ARCHITECT GREG TRUEN TRANSLATES THE OPTIMISM OF THE MID-CENTURY MODERNISTS INTO A CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN CONTEXT
Architect Greg Truen’s home adapts its Mid- Century Modernist influences within a contemporary African context
From busy Kloof Nek Road in Cape Town, architect Greg Truen’s house plays a little game with passers-by. The road is one of the city’s and the country’s oldest—it was originally a supply route for soldiers linking Camps Bay and the Atlantic seaboard with the city. The wall outside his house, facing the street, is made from stone, like the remnants of historical walls you find all around Cape Town. “Whether it’s the wall down Buitengracht Street that separates the Bo-kaap from the city, or the walls at the castle or around the harbour, they all use exactly this kind of construction,” says Truen. They’re part of the fabric of the city—immediately familiar and at home on the winding road between Table Mountain and Lion’s Head. “Kloof Nek Road is a very strong representation of the urban environment,” explains the architect. “The wall tries to set up a dialogue with the history of architecture in Cape Town.”
Beyond the boundary, however, is a tantalising vision—a glass roof that peeps over the top of the wall with a kind of inverted pyramid floating inside it. “It becomes a light box at night.” This mysterious “hat” on top of the house is part of the building’s response to what the architect calls its “powerful” but complex site. “It’s got a set of almost opposing forces at work,” he muses.
NATURAL PANORAMA
Once you leave the road, you find yourself descending a steep slope. The views around you close in, but open onto an incredible panoramic vista. “You’ve got a big, expansive view of the city and the bay and the mountains in the distance,” explains Truen. “Although you are surrounded by the mountains, you’re not that aware of it. You’ve kind of turned your back on it. You’ve got to look up to see it.” And that’s where the roof comes in: its origami-like structure takes the form of an inverted pyramid so that it can create clerestory windows and openings that let in views of Table Mountain and Lion’s Head behind the house.
“ALTHOUGH YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY THE MOUNTAINS, YOU’RE NOT THAT AWARE OF IT ... YOU’VE GOT TO LOOK UP TO SEE IT”
The architect’s solution to building on such a steep incline was to design a house that cascades down the site. “I wanted each constructed level to feel like it was first and foremost a piece of the landscape with planting in it,” he explains. “I wanted to create slabs of landscape, and to bring the landscape right up to the edge of the internal spaces, as if the mountain comes right up to the house and then runs through it, so the floor surfaces are positioned on the land, as it were.” He even tiled the floors with granite slabs because “they have the colouring and composition that you see in the Cape, often.” The idea was to have the rooms feeling as if they were simply covered strata of the mountainside. “You feel that you’re sitting in the landscape,” he says. “I’m quite interested in this idea of taking a slab of landscape, putting a hat on it and living under that hat.” This idea of a shelter is “articulated by a ceiling and floorlevel changes to give definition to different spaces.” Truen talks about the way the “quite big, simple spaces” inside the house borrow space from one another and outside.
PERFECT HARMONY
The house is arranged on three levels, with garages and services at the bottom, bedrooms in the middle and living areas on top. In and around the rooms, there are planted courtyards that make you feel as if you are “surrounded by landscape”. They enhance the effect of that amazing geometric roof, which Truen says is vividly animated by the sky, sun and the moon, and “reinforces the connection to nature and the mountains”. The courtyards and smaller views create a sense of layering. The way in which the gardens bring the landscape up and into the house also brings nature to his doorstep. “I was expecting bird life, which has been abundant and great, but the insect life that has emerged has been really interesting,” says the architect. “I’ve got some really cool bumblebees that visit every morning.” Inside, the open-plan spaces continue the sense of connectedness that the house strives for in its blurring of landscape and building. Truen’s house isn’t just about engaging with Cape Town’s urban heritage and relating it to the powerful presence of nature that the city has. There’s a broader cultural sense in which he wants to engage with the spirit of the place. “I also want the building and what’s in it to reflect the cultural space that it comes from, both at a micro level of Cape Town, and at a macro level of Africa.” Truen’s firm, SAOTA Architecture and Design, does a lot of work throughout the African continent. “I have a very contemporary view of the continent as a modern place,” he says. “It’s exciting, and I wanted the house to reflect that.” In fact, the washed-oak interior finishes, particularly the ceilings, have their joints articulated with beautiful brass details, which is picked up in various fittings throughout the house. “One of the prompts for using a vein of metal through the house was the story of gold mining on Lion’s Head,” he says. In the mid to late 1880s, prospectors discovered
gold deposits on Lion’s Head, and attempted to establish a mine. Although the mining venture never came to anything, it remains a fascinating footnote to the city’s industrial history. “The depression is still visible opposite the house,” he says. The art and furnishings continue the dialogue that the architecture begins with its starting point in the optimism and newness of early California and Brazilian Modernism. “I wanted that enthusiasm and optimism to come through,” says Truen. “It’s definitely got that new-world feel.” While the furnishings make good use of custom pieces from OKHA, the furniture design studio attached to SAOTA, the pieces that Truen has collected reflect a modern African aesthetic. The Sefefo Series table and stools in the master bedroom—a collaboration between Botswana designer Peter Mabeo and Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola—is a prime example. “It encapsulates all of these ideas about a global world, and a new Modern African sensibility in that globalised world, as an equal partner,” says the architect. Similarly, the outdoor furniture from Moroso combines Senegalese and Italian design, and craft techniques with contemporary materials. Thus the architect’s house becomes a home that’s both sophisticated and of its place.