Lighting in Design Q3 2021

ideas we had to do with contemporary architecture built using traditional techniques,” says Truen. The building forms a connection between the landscape and the dam wall. Its earth-coloured walls take their cue from the poured-mud walls of the heritage buildings. “It’s a technique somewhere between rammed earth and working with concrete,” explains Booyens. “You could almost say it’s a primitive form of working with concrete, but instead of concrete, we worked with mud.” The walls are more than a metre thick, and have been left unpainted, expressing their materiality and blending with the landscape. The vaulted brick roof was an experiment in construction devised to simplify the expensive and highly skilled labour usually required to construct vaults. It involved creating a system of steel beams and a plywood template, and building the vault one row at a time, which proved both cost efficient and appropriate for the skills available locally. “When we took the shutter out, it stood up, because it was a real catenary arch,” says Booyens. The rest of the roof is planted, and steel waterspouts cantilever far out from the walls so that water draining from the roof does not fall against the wall, a technique adapted from vernacular West African adobe architecture. “For me it was a really interesting experience to go and find materials on site, and then build something that is so fundamentally in tune with the climate and performs so much better than any contemporary building,” says Truen. “There are definitely lessons there.”

termites and the floors and ceiling rotted. When repairs began, it was discovered that the wine store had originally been a single-level building, and its parapet was raised in the 1970s to allow for another level so it could be used as a house. “When we repaired the plaster, we could see that the bottom part of the building was made out of poured mud, and then as you go up, there are some sundried bricks, and thenmore contemporary bricks right at the top,” says Truen. A somewhat clunky staircase has also been added. The repairs and restoration of the wine store involved reorganising the ground level so that it could function as a living area and kitchen, and locating the bedroom and bathroom on the mezzanine above. The ground floor was levelled and paved in stone harvested from the surrounding veld. The rotted upper floor was replaced with SA pine, which was limewashed. The roof upstairs was finished with poplar beams and a rietdak ceiling. “We had to create a new stair between the levels,” says Truen. “Of course, that raised the question of how you insert new fabric into old fabric.” Booyens designed a new self-supporting steel staircase as a contrasting contemporary insertion. “The staircase doesn’t touch the original structure of the building,” he says. It floats above the floor and is set slightly apart from the walls, connecting at a single point on the floor and at just one point on the mezzanine level.” The exterior of the wine store has been painted pink partly in reference to the historical practice in the karoo of mixing lime to make a light red or pink colour, and partly in an exploration of some of the historical connections between Cape and Mexican architecture. Pump House The pump house is a new building constructed in response to the need for an irrigation building. “It was an opportunity to experiment and test some

PROJECTTEAM Architects: Jaco Booyens Architect and SAOTA Contractor: Pro-Projects and De Kock Bouers

Landscaping: Fritz Coetzee Interior designer: ARRCC Bespoke furniture: OKHA Photographer: Adam Letch

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LiD Q3 - 2021