Curated by Hana Abdel
GYMNASIUM, HOUSES • CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
Architects : Malan Vorster Architecture Interior Design
Area : 180 m²
Year : 2020
Photographs : Adam Letch
Manufacturers : western red cedar, Hackwood, Modular Lighting Instruments
Architect In Charge:Pieter Malan, Jan-Heyn Vorster，Peter Urry
Design Team : Malan Vorster Architecture, Interior Design
Structural Engineer : Design Tech Structural Engineers
Quantity Surveyors : Heinrich Beer Quantity Surveyors
Landscape : Mary Maurel
Main Contractor : Arnold Meiring
Specialist Carpenter : Theunis Naude
Specialist Metalwork : Link Engineering
Specialist Cabinetry : Versfeld
City : Cape Town
Country : South Africa
Textual content description supplied by the architects. The challenge transient known as for the addition of a gymnasium pavilion to the prevailing context of a giant household property in Constantia. The architects have been concerned within the grasp planning and varied buildings on the property, and the goal was to cut back the influence of a brand new structure on the well-established gardens, informing the choice to assemble the health club pavilion onto the prevailing concrete slab roof of an older visitor cottage and storage space.
The chosen place inside the property offered thrilling prospects: surrounding mature timber provided shelter and sitting perched on the sting of an current retaining wall supplied a way of dynamic stability. The location, being between the principle higher garden of the backyard and the parking werf under it, would permit the building to interact with a variety of various view facets in addition to hook up with the distinction terraced ranges surrounding it. The place additionally meant the gymnasium may very well be linked to the visitor suite under it by way of an inside staircase. The visitor suite obtained an replace with new open-plan format, finishes and furnishings.
Metal and timber development strategies had been employed to attenuate the influence of concrete and different moist works, as a lot of the elements may very well be manufactured off web site, lowering the environmental influence of the development course of. The architects have been concerned within the design and development of a tree house-like structure for a similar shopper, which is on increased floor not removed from the newer gymnasium pavilion. The tree home has served because the inspiration for the choice of supplies, development methodology and detailing.
The gymnasium pavilion, equally, is an train in treading flippantly on the panorama and goals to make the reference to nature a key design informant – particularly as one is conscious about the proprietor’s ardour for nature and gardening. It was seen as paramount to design the structure as being recessive to the panorama.
This intention, nonetheless, created a paradox, for the reason that very nature of the pavilion typology is one in every of object quite than the intangible. A lesson learnt from the older tree home challenge was that the materiality of a building can scale back the influence of an architectural object within the panorama: the pure textures and colours of wooden and rusted metal, for example, can mitigate the starkness of glass; dematerializing building mass might be completed by way of slatted screens and pergolas; however most significantly, the results of time’s passing must be embraced, in order that pure weathering and oxidation can tone down the marks of man’s hand and instruments on wooden, copper and metal.
The tectonic stance of the building, that’s, to make the architectural idea and logic simply accessible to the viewer or inhabitant, is seen as a dialogue between the response to the panorama, the technical development facets thereof and the detailing of each materials facet of the building:
The gymnasium area is housed below a pavilion-like and hovering roof. The roof is expressed as a folded and floating copper cover, with two reverse corners lifted upwards to afford views into the adjoining oak timber. The roof is seemingly levitating on frameless glazing, achieved by shaping the metal roof helps to minimal blade-thin slivers.
The wall planes have been distilled into three distinct parts:
o Firstly, one encounters the curved and timber clad façade that incorporates the doorway door and homes the staircase to the visitor suite within the current building under. The curved wall parts give a nod to the adjoining tree home geometry.
o Secondly, the façade dealing with the decrease gardens and parking “werf” have been handled as a mix of semi-transparent and stable planes: the glazing and aero-foil formed timber privateness display parts relaxation on a sandstone slab wall set again from the prevailing building edge, to allow vegetation to creep over the tough and unpainted plaster wall of the visitor unit under. The sandstone wall cladding on the brand new health club is a easily honed aircraft, in the identical materials however contrasting with the prevailing building’s roughly hewn sandstone buttresses. The aero-foil timber screens might be adjusted by the inhabitant to swimsuit one’s want for privateness when exercising, or to open up views to the north-eastern gardens and historic cork oak timber located there.
o Thirdly, the remaining two facades are glazed, with stacking sliding doorways opening up fully to the nook of the building, additionally overlooking a brand new surrounding fish pond. The doorways present entry to a meditation deck on the north-western facet, sheltered by an overhead timber pergola. This deck has lengthy views over adjoining vineyards and distant mountains.
The varied facades are structurally linked by means of a metal H-section column and beam body, of which two beams lengthen to kind the pergola. Metal H-section have been stuffed in with western purple cedar parts, all formed to have softer natural particulars and edges.
The health club’s inside materials choice is a continuation of the building’s materiality, with cedar ceilings, tough sawn timber flooring and touches of hand turned brass parts. The identical supplies are carried by means of to the renovation of the prevailing visitor unit under, which might be accessed from the health club by way of a cedar clad stairwell lit from above with a spherical skylight trying up into the tree branches.
The visitor unit consists of a residing/eating room with kitchenette, linked to a bed room suite with privateness pocket-doors on each side of a floating central tv-unit and headboard wall. The kitchen and all different cabinetwork had been customized by the architects.
