Kunshuis Home and Gallery / Strukt Architects
An artwork collector’s residence in Riebeek-Kasteel – Our purchasers are artwork fans who, over a few years, constructed up a notable assortment of South African Artwork. Their dream was to construct a house in South Africa the place they might show their artwork. Their temporary was easy: design a live-in artwork gallery. First, it was to be an artwork gallery and, secondly, a house—the setting for his or her imaginative and prescient – the quaint city of Riebeek Kasteel. The couple fell in love with the city itself and the thriving native artwork group, and the ERF location on the village’s predominant street would make it doable for the general public to benefit from the assortment once in a while.
The design course of was a observe of stability. Whereas the house primarily wanted to be a gallery, it nonetheless needed to be a house. We had to make sure there can be sufficient wall house for the artwork and sufficient openings to have fun the views and permit heat pure mild to stream in whereas contemplating the preservation of the artwork.
The plan was shaped by juxtaposing two units of planes, the one turned to true north, making it doable for us to handle the pure mild and emphasize the view to the Kasteelberg mountain vary. The opposite is, in fact, created by the restrictions of the location boundaries, making a well-defined avenue edge.
All through the design course of, there was the necessity to negotiate the wants of the gallery with the normal concepts of what a house wants to supply. One such instance is the standard boundary partitions generally used as a safety measure in South Africa. As an alternative, we prompt combining the excessive perimeter partitions with the sliding screens, which might safe the property and additional shield and shade the dwelling areas from direct daylight.
The positioning posed a number of constraints and was informative in relation to the shopper’s necessities for this system. The positioning has an space of 852 sqm with an allowable protection of fifty% and a peak restrict of 6m.
We have been left with 426 sqm for the constructing footprint and due to this fact wanted to make use of the complete extent of the location, constructing line to constructing line, to make this system match. This introduced concerning the idea of making a pure mass, extruding to the complete limitations of the location, after which carving areas from it to attain 50% protection. The limitation of peak restriction compelled us to increase the mass into the earth to make room for a second bed room. The size we tried to manage by breaking the increase right into a base, a center, and a high was impressed by the area’s vernacular structure. With the bottom, allotted in a clean plaster end, for the center part, we used a plaster end that creates a stipple or textured end referred to as Tyrolean, which is a notable wall end throughout the city in addition to throughout the area and for the highest, we left the roof’s concrete uncovered. A distinguished characteristic of the structure throughout the area is using a “stoep” or porch, which we made positive the home had its personal. It faces North and includes a sculpture by native artist Anton Momberg, on a low plinth. We used native landscapers to help in bringing the dimensions of the constructing down by creating mounds and planting vegetation indigenous to the area.
