An ingenious addition to this Johannesburg home not only makes a unique space that inspires creative living but could also become two separate houses.

WORDS Graham Wood PHOTOGRAPHY Greg Cox PRODUCTION Sven Alberding

As Colin and Tammy Levin’s family grew, the point came at which they thought they might have to leave their home in Parkhurst in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“It was a typical Parkhurst scenario,” says Tammy. “As the family gets bigger, the house gets too small.” It was around that time the property next door to theirs became available, presenting new possibilities.

The couple approached architect Gregory Katz, and with him devised an ingenious plan to join the two properties and extend their house. It was designed in such a way that an addition could stand on its own as an individual house at a later stage.

“When the time came, we could sell two different homes,” says Tammy.

Colin and Tammy’s original house, brick with corrugated iron roof traditional in the area, was left largely unchanged apart from a kitchen revamp.

“All they really needed were bedrooms,” says Gregory. “So we lifted the whole house up on columns and put all the bedrooms upstairs.” That left the area downstairs covered but open-air, creating an entertainment area. An extension of the original home’s living area has become a bridge joining the two houses so that together they form a U-shape around a grassy courtyard.

“The idea is that someone buying that house already has all the bedrooms upstairs, and they could close off the downstairs section and convert it into the living area and kitchen,” says Gregory. “We’ve planned where the kitchen would go. It has all the plumbing in place.”

Separating them would involve simply building a wall between the properties and glassing in the section downstairs. There are even separate garages.

Colin and Gregory have a shared love of geometry and ingenious flexible spaces. Gregory’s work is often recognisable for the patterning in the details as much as for the sometimes Rubix-cube-like ingenuity of the structures themselves. Colin is an engineer turned designer and manufacturer of cutting-edge indoor
and outdoor children’s play equipment through his award-winning design company, Geppetto’s World.
He designed the house brand PlayOn, geometric soft play equipment combining blocks, rollers, barrels and wedges that encourage creative yet purposeful play. “We want to inspire kids to play freely,” says Colin. “We go with modular concepts that are non-prescriptive so that they can be imaginative with the equipment.”

Colin and Gregory’s shared philosophy led to a design for a home that would be flexible and creativity- inspiring with clever geometry at its heart. “Together they created a space that is unique and forward- thinking,” says Tammy. “Greg and Colin were both interested in how simple we could make the design so that we can allow for really creative living using the space differently all the time.” In fact, the two of them have gone on to design school playgrounds together.

Although they used concrete for the new building, juxtaposing it with the brick of Colin and Tammy’s original house, the new house is a contemporary rendering of the old one. “We tried to interpret the architecture of the original house, and almost transplant it onto the first floor,” says Gregory. They left the concrete raw so that the contrast between the old and new would set off a dialogue between the two sections.

The original house had exposed trusses in the kitchen area, for example, and the bedrooms and playroom upstairs in the new section reinterpret the pitched roof, but with a much sleeker, more geometric execution. “We used quite a sophisticated roof structure,” says Gregory. “Instead of trusses, we used sloping steel beams to create the pitch so we could slope the ceiling. You get that very nice volume; the ceiling just rakes up. Then we punched in a dormer window so that the ceiling recedes into the window, and you get amazing light and shadow interplay on the ceiling.”

Gregory also reinterpreted the corrugated iron roof of the original house but used corrugated polycarbonate sheeting instead.

Tammy refers to the flexible, creative design that Gregory and Colin chose as an empty canvas both for living and decorating.

“I wanted to soften it, to traditionalise it a bit,” she says. She added a modern herringbone parquet floor and black steel doors to separate the two areas. “From a creative point of view, there was something really interesting about having a space that you had this very organic relationship with,” says Tammy. Referring particularly to the living spaces downstairs, she says, “Those spaces have been everything you could possibly imagine. The TV area has been every part of the house. The dining room has been every part of the house. Every single time people would come to our house, it would be different. It is a lot of fun, constantly reliving, reinventing, reworking the space.”

The Levins’ furniture accommodates the multiple reconfigurations beautifully. They have an eclectic collection of raw and refined pieces, mixing contemporary and traditional designs with wit and flair, befitting the house’s own dialogue with tradition.

Tammy says that in the same way Colin’s geometric developmental play equipment inspires creative play, the architecture of the house inspires creative living.

“It’s about empowering people,” she says.