An architect's own house

 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 African Architectural Record: Feb 1942)

Martienssen was the leading intellectual of the "Transvaal Group", who brought the teachings and design principles of le Corbusier to South Africa. In the Department of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand, Geoff Pearse had incrementally been attracting young lecturers who espoused the Modern Movement, creating a generation of students who followed the same ideals, with Rex Martienssen at the forefront. Several of these students went on to teach in the Department, thus entrenching modernism as the dominant approach. Not only was Martienssen a charismatic teacher, but he was passionate about spreading these ideals and design style to the rest of the profession, initially through the launch of a journal named "Zero Hour", which unfortunately had only one volume. He went on to become the editor of the South African Architectural Record, which he and his associates completely transformed, including attracting advertisers of modern materials such as steel windows.

But back to his house. This was his fifth design, moving increasingly away from the early sketches that were strongly influenced by le Corbusier, to one that was more abstract, almost to the extent of being a built form of an exercise in proportion rather than a dwelling. This may have been in part through the influence of his wife, Heather, herself a fine artist and lecturer, and in part through his studies into Ancient Greece. His PhD was a seminal work, which he published as "The idea of space in Greek Architecture".

The entire front facade is surrounded by a "picture frame" projecting far forward from the main plane of the building and casting deep shadows, most notably at the bottom, which makes the whole house appear to be floating. The living area on the ground floor and the study directly above, have floor-to-ceiling windows, the full width of the space. The garden is simply lawn, sloping gently, and uninterrupted, to the street, which maybe why the photographs always have the curtains shut! The present owners clearly understand the importance of this very idealised siting (an interpretation of his Greek studies) and have compromised with a modest metal fence onto the street.

By contrast, these two spaces with an excessive amount of light, are contrasted with the dining area on the ground floor and the main bedroom, both of which have tiny windows facing the optimal North-east orientation. The entrance has almost no natural light, nor does the tiny second bedroom, with a glazed door to its small projecting balcony and no window at all. This contrast between intense light and almost complete darkness is certainly a statement, but must be quite difficult to live with.

What is interesting is the legacy of this building. In the 1950s, the students who had studied under Martienssen were now practising architects, with the extraordinary building boom that followed World War II. Many of these new buildings were medium to high-rise apartment blocks, and here it is interesting to see the prevalence of Martienssen's idioms. The small "pop-out" balcony appears everywhere that you find these 1950s buildings, often accenting a wall with a smooth plaster finish.

Llenveolan in Killarney by Harold le Roith

Another idiom prevalent in Johannesburg that derives from House Martienssen is the plaster-framed window, often on a facebrick wall. This combination is often used as a contrast to walls of smooth plaster with continuous windows set flush with the face of the wall (as can be seen in the photo of Llenveolan).

Framed windows in a facebrick wall: Great Martindale Hall, Riviera

Developer clients of the 1950s were very keen on facebrick, as it has no maintenance demands, so the technique of elevating these otherwise dreary expanses with the white plaster frames was  a great compromise. It is interesting to see how this feature pops up all over Johannesburg's flat-land, testament to the power of a tiny building that is more manifesto than dwelling.