Anne-apolis

  Last week I was walking with a friend at Emmarentia Dam. The weather was idyllic for late summer, with not a whisper of wind, allowing a perfect reflection of the trees and sky in the water. This set me thinking, what is it in nature that gives us this sense of immense calm, and what can we learn from this as designers? The most obvious parallel in architecture is in the use of reflecting pools, which  have been used by some of the best-known modernists, including le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, often creating a contrast between the asymmetrical composition of the building volumes and the symmetry of the reflection. Barcelona Pavilion by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Creative Commons Licensed:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barcelona_Pavilion_pool.JPG . This technique is used extensively by Oscar Niemeyer in Brasilia, enlivening the bold volumes and strikingly sculptural concrete structural elements. This adds to the drama of the asymmetrical forms and the play...

  Having spent the first 21 years of my life in a house that was designed by my parents, I have a special interest in the houses that architects design for themselves. Our home started off as a tiny two-bedroom, but had a quite large open-plan living and dining area and a huge kitchen, in anticipation of the house it would grow into. Every four or five years, the builders sand and piles of bricks would arrive, and we would know that the next phase was about to begin.  This incremental approach is one that I have seen many times, partly because architects invariably have dreams far larger than their wallets! On the other hand, one finds some architects designing a manifesto rather than a home - as I discovered in my first year as an architectural student. We were taken to the house of one of the iconic names of the Modern Movement in South Africa, one which remains very much in its original form from its construction in 1942. House Martienssen at the time of completion (South A...

 Earlier this year, I explored some of the things you can DIY easily and safely without learning advanced skills or compromising your home insurance. Today, I was inspired to share some projects where I have collaborated with others who started out as unskilled as myself, namely outdoor paving. While going through some of my mom's photos of the house that I grew up in, I found one that brought back memories of seemingly endless weekends working side by side with my dad. We had a very long and narrow plot, with the house at the far end from the road, and a winding earth track with a "middelmannetjie" of wild grass growing in the centre. Our project started quite modestly, simply to put down some paving outside the new garage doors to provide a hard-standing for our weekend car cleaning ritual. The project soon escalated, and ended up with much of the earth track being replaced with brickwork. The driveway looking towards the street We had chosen paving bricks for the proj...

  Today I am looking after some contractors who are repairing a cupboard at my daughter's house which had been damaged when her geyser burst some weeks ago. As with anyone in South Africa who has a mortgage with a bank or other financial institution, she has Homeowners Cover, an insurance policy that covers any structural damage, fire damage or damage from any water problems such as a burst water pipe. This insurance is to protect the financial institution, as the home is considered part of their assets while the mortgage is still in operation. Of course, it also protects the homeowner from the kind of damage that can often be very costly to repair or remedy. Damage to the cupboard that houses the geyser In this instance, as is often the case, the insurers are very quick to repair the immediate problem: the geyser was replaced within a matter of days. But often the "consequential damage", the secondary and less urgent result of the initial problem, seems to be taken far l...

  Yesterday I was given a lift by a colleague who has two small children, one 5 year-old and one who is 2 years old. We have just started on a project to look at toddler safety in informal settlements, so this topic has been foremost in my mind. I was thinking, what if I invited my colleague to my home and she needed to bring her children? Would I be able to make my place safe for them, especially if their mom and I were engrossed in our conversation and not giving them full-time attention? While I was pretty conscientious about toddler-proofing our house when my children were small, I remember this as being quite an investment of time and money, and that it was an on-going project as they grew physically and mentally. The question today is what do I need to do to adapt a very adult-orientated environment. A general view of my living room My first step would be to decide how much of the house to secure - I am quite lucky in this regard as each of my rooms can be closed off - my dau...

Some of my favourite toys were those made for us by my dad from scrap timber that he had salvaged on construction sites. When we were very small, these were quite chunky wooden blocks, lovingly shaped and sanded, and as we got older, the blocks became smaller as we developed dexterity. Back in the 1960s, when my dad was a practising architect, building sites were notable for the lack of waste. The craftsmen had a very clear hierarchy - offcuts were pieces (of whatever material) that could be reused, and were safely stowed for just this purpose, and the "scrap" that my dad would collect for our toys was kept to a minimum. This was facilitated by the manufacturers' sizing of materials and components, which had evolved over many decades, and in some trades, over centuries. For example, a standard brick was 3 x 4.5 x 9 inches - this facilitated a number of different "bonding" layouts, or ways of arranging the bricks in a wall. Some of the more common brick bonds Cre...