4 minute read
UPDATED TERRACE One
I N B R I E F –L O C A T I O N Green Point, Cape Town, South Africa T Y P E O F P R O P E R T Y Semi-detached Victorian cottage B E D R O O M S 3 P R O J E C T S T A R T E D February 2018 P R O J E C T F I N I S H E D September 2018 S I Z E 140sqm B U I L D C O S T Around £100,000
Successful renovation projects strike a careful balance between maintaining a building’s character and incorporating modern interventions. A prime example is this recently renovated home in Green Point, a densely developed suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. ‘When we found the house back in 2012, we thought it had a beautiful old soul,’ says Liani Douglas, 40. She and her husband Jan, 42, run an architecture and design studio, and they both felt inspired by the property. ‘But we knew that any changes made in the future had to preserve that feeling,’ she adds.
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A single-storey cottage dating from the late 1800s, the house was built by one of the city’s early commercial developers, but had been rather neglected. Its interior had undergone an assortment of alterations over the years, and Liani and Jan saw the project as an exciting opportunity. ‘We decided to live here for a few years before making any changes,’ says Liani. ‘We wanted to understand things such as where the light falls at different times of the day and at different points in the year. It was a good job we waited because, if we’d started straight away, we might have done things very differently.’
ABOVE A piece by South African artist and comics creator Anton Kannemeyer hangs over the sideboard in the dining area LEFT The Stonekeeper-MMXVI coffee table by Douglas & Company is made from powder-coated steel and marble
ABOVE The final twist of the stairs is made from powder-coated steel, creating a graphic, sculptural element that draws the eye upwards Their carefully considered interventions began with raising the angle of the rear section of roof. ‘We left the ridge in the same place, but angled the roof differently, allowing us to add a level at the back,’ says Liani. This new space, which overlooks the living area and the rear courtyard, serves to bring in natural light. It includes a snug, which doubles as a home office, and sits alongside Liani and Jan’s bedroom and bathroom.
The ground-f loor layout is typical for a Victorian cottage, and the couple kept it largely unchanged. ‘We retained the f loor plan downstairs to stay true to the house, but we enlarged some of the doorways to link together the living area, dining space and kitchen,’
Liani explains. There is also a small bathroom on the ground f loor, plus a further two rooms that can be used as guest bedrooms, one of which leads out onto the enclosed courtyard at the back of the house.
Liani and Jan restored all the wooden floors and reused the roof trusses that were removed during the alterations, turning them into a screen wall for the staircase, timber posts in the living area and kitchen shelves. Original features such as the fireplace, which was rescued from under layers of paint, were renovated too.
From the outside, the front of the house appears almost unaltered apart from the addition of the two dormer windows, which blend well with the Victorian architecture. The couple did renovate the veranda, but were careful to maintain its proportions and the decorative wrought-iron railings.
Liani and Jan filled the house with many of their own furniture designs. ‘We like to play with colour and form,’ says Liani. ‘But there is a serious undertone because we also want our furniture to stand the test of time. Our architectural style goes hand in hand with this approach, and so they complement each other. But whereas the construction industry is a slowly turning wheel, taking a couple of years for ideas to come to fruition, furniture design is much more immediate.’
The two disciplines merge at certain points in the house. ‘One of our pieces of furniture looks like part of a staircase – it certainly has echoes of the staircase we added to the house,’ Liani says. ‘And we translated the design of the handles on the sideboard in the dining room into the new kitchen cupboards. It was good to be able to road-test some of the concepts and materials in this way.’
The full-length glazing on the new south-facing upper level has opened the rear of the cottage to an unexpectedly charming urban rooftop view, with Signal Hill rising up beyond. ‘The house was special even before the renovations,’ says Liani. ‘But now it is a real delight and an immense source of joy.’
