the round house
A beacon of modernist architecture in Pretoria has become a showcase for its artist owner’s work and creativity
ou know a building has achieved some sort of iconic status when misconceptions circulate and people tell each other fantastically erroneous “facts” about it. The Round House, as it’s known, in the Pretoria suburb of Arcadia, is one such house. Artist Margaret Nel has lived there since 1976, when she married diplomat and later poet and writer Willem Schalk van Heerden, who built it. He commissioned the design in 1961, enlisting Germanborn engineer May von Langenau to do justice to the views from the steeply sloping site on Meintjieskop looking out towards the Magaliesberg.
The stories that have made their way back to Margaret include claims that her house rotates with the sun and that it isn’t a house at all, but a reservoir. “Someone once asked me whether it was true that the floors were glass,” she says.
As is often the case with local legends, the truth is at once less spectacular and more interesting. “It’s a prime example of Pretoria modernism,” says Margaret. Despite its reputation as a rather staid city, Pretoria is well known for pioneering a distinctive brand of modernist architecture, particularly in the ’50s and ’60s, that is regarded as often more regionally sensitive and locally appropriate than the more internationalist white boxes being built at the time in other South African cities.
The Round House is raised from the ground on 12 stilts or pilotis, and the concrete floors are suspended above them from a framework of steel girders. On the facade, the panels and ribbon windows are a modernist device for letting in the view. In fact, part of the rationale for the cylindrical structure of the house was to make the most of the spectacular views.
Although there are two storeys of accommodation, Margaret points out, “from below it has a triple-storey aspect”. The front door from the driveway leads onto the first floor, but the terraced slope of the site means that there is another level below – a kind of covered outdoor entertainment area underneath the house. The house doesn’t rotate, but the rooms fan out from a central spiral stairwell that runs like a corkscrew through the core of the building. “There’s nothing that’s 90 degrees,” says Margaret. The floors are not glass, although lengthy correspondence between Willem and May reveals what a long and agonised process choosing the material for the floors was. At one point Willem suggested quarry tiles. May answered delicately: “Since you asked if I have any objections, I may answer that I would not welcome them.” In the end they chose beautiful polished terrazzo radiating out in cream and grey wedges in the north-facing rooms, and cream and pink in the south-facing rooms, which turned out to be one of the house’s most outstanding interior details.
Not too much has been done to alter the original architecture. Margaret has opened up the kitchen. But for the most part, the design has proved versatile enough to have accommodated changing demands ranging from hosting diplomatic functions to raising a family and serving as an artist’s home. She recently refurbished the ground level, which was walled in when her children were small. “You lost the sense of floating and suspended space. I was determined to restore it,” she says. “People always ask how I find furniture for curved rooms,” adds Margaret. “But it has been easy.” It turns out curved walls aren’t tricky at all, and there are enough straight interior walls on which to hang art.
“A while ago, I began actively collecting mid-century modern furniture to reflect the heritage of the house,” Margaret says. The Poltrona Costela or Bone chairs in the living room, by Martin Eisler (an Austrian designer working in Brazil), were bought in Brazil by Willem just after the house was completed. It’s a pleasing parallel in a South African house by a German designer. And appropriate: one of the main influences on Pretoria modernism was Brazilian modernism, which translated to a South African context better than its European counterpart.
Other furnishings reveal a strong interest in the design of industrial, military or hospital furniture – particularly in the steel cabinets and custom-made double army bed (they are usually single) in Margaret’s bedroom. These chime well with the industrial influence in the design of the house, in the use of steel, for instance.
Since she has been living here largely alone for the past decade, since Willem’s death, the interiors of the house have become something of an artistic project. “I use it as a showcase for my work and as a canvas for creative expression,” says Margaret. She is a prolific art collector and constantly arranges and rearranges artworks and objets around the house into installations. “The arrangements of elements speak to the artworks,” she says. “It’s a bit whimsical. They are like little narratives, almost, ongoing combinations of found objects collected over a long period of time.”
Margaret’s current body of work, predominantly in acrylics, concentrates on images of meat and confectionery, often under clingfilm. The paintings are at once alluring and repulsive, and deal thematically with questions of decay and consumer culture. She’s playing with the title Best Before for her next exhibition, which will take place at the Pretoria Art Museum. It must be comforting living in the Round House while contemplating such subject matter – a reminder that some things weather time, fashion and throwaway culture. The Round House has not even come close to reaching its sell-by date. • margaretnel.com
Text Graham Wood Production Tiaan Nagel Photography Sarah de Pina
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