Lighting in Design Q3 2021

A restoration with a light touch The restoration of the ensemble of heritage buildings on Buffelsdrift, west of Ladismith in the arid Klein Karoo region of the Western Cape, by SAOTA and Jaco Booyens Architect, a specialist in clay buildings, recently won the gold medal at the seventh edition of the international Domus Restoration and Conservation Award in Italy.

Q&A with Jaco Booyens and Greg Truen Q: Howwas lighting chosen so as not to detract from the building’s heritage? A: On the outer facades we used two types of lighting. The lights next to doors or entrances when entering the buildings were custom designed and manufactured lights based on Gawie Fagan’s Groot Constantia interpretation of a traditional lantern light. The frames are simple 16 mm mild steel square tube powder coated in black with clear glass covers, built into the mud with two horizontal bars as support. Throughout the scheme these lights were placed just above lintel height. The front facade entrance of the main house has two lantern lights; one on each side of the door. The lower lights were designed to be as unobtrusive as possible. We decided on mild steel folded plate boxes powder coated in white and built-in flush with the mud walls to create a slot where the light shines downwards. It reads on the facade as a vertical slot emitting light. They can be seen on the front facade as well. These lights also came in handy in the interiors, for instance, to light the Wine Store staircase landing and some of the bathrooms. We mounted one above the freestanding bath and at foot level in the small bathroom’s shower. The lights were also used to light the parking area and as footlights on stone stairs going down from the parking area to the main house kitchen entrance. Q: Were there issues or challenges with wiring the lighting in ‘old’ walls? A: Wiring in mud walls is actually a lot easier

to install. To hide conduits in a softer material like mud is much less of a fight than grinding into plaster and brick. The whole process can be done without power tools. Lime plaster, being much more ‘plasticy’ and with a more ‘alive’ type surface makes covering it up also quite easy. Q: The interiors feature an assortment of interesting light fittings – can you tell us more about those? A: The internal l ights were much more contemporary than those outside. The strategy for the internal lighting was to use spotlights for task lighting and to accent artworks. For general mood lighting, we used tabletop lighting, which creates warm zones in the house and fills the space with a general low level of lighting. We used strip lights from Province Lighting fixed to the overhead original Yellow Wood beams and ceilings so as to keep the lights in the background. Task lighting in the bathrooms and some pedestal lights were specifically chosen to be contemporary. A: The electronics of modern dimmable LED lighting are quite sensitive. We had some issues with the so-called dirty electricity in the countryside. I would propose the next time round to try and get the lighting circuit specifically to be run off grid with solar and an inverter to give the lights clean, high quality electricity. A fairly small system should be able to carry the load for this. Q: Did the electricity supply to the remote area impact your lighting decisions?

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LiD Q3 - 2021