Combining architectural design with warm, layered finishes and welcoming interiors, this compact Cape Town home makes for ideal modern living.

WORDS Robyn Alexander PHOTOGRAPHY Greg Cox/ Bureaux PRODUCTION Jeanne Botes

Almost 100 years ago, in his influential 1927 manifesto Vers Une Architecture (Towards An Architecture), architect Le Corbusier declared: “A house is a machine for living in.” Much discussed and critiqued ever since, the concept retains its essential explanatory usefulness. For modern designers, buildings should always balance functionality with aesthetics.

That may sound simple, but it definitely isn’t easy to do well. When it is managed as beautifully as it has been in this Cape Town home, it’s something to celebrate.

The home isn’t large; it has two bedrooms and bathrooms, an open-plan area for cooking, dining and living, and a small outdoor living space and garden. Tuck in a pocket-sized home office close to the front door, add a double garage just large enough for two vehicles, and there’s the entire footprint. But while it might be the size of a cottage, due to its thoughtful design and subtly layered interiors, this compact home punches well above its weight.

The home’s previous – and original – owner was the architect who designed it, the homeowner reveals. “He used this tiny sliver of land to make something special,” she says. The house feels welcoming and cosy – yet also airy and spacious. The architect had created the house as a scaling-down property for himself and his wife after his retirement from full-time practice. The homeowner points out there are many ways he had added practical and aesthetic value to it through key design choices.

The kitchen, dining area and living room are all contained within a single open-plan space. The user-friendly original kitchen was largely retained during the renovation; the homeowners added marble agglomerate splashbacks, installed the wood-burning stove and replaced the previous pendants with an elegant linear light fitting.

Natural light pours into the centre of the house via a central atrium courtyard in the morning, then reaches into the west-facing living area in the afternoon via fully retractable glass sliding doors – all of which, like the rest of the windows in the house, are double-glazed for optimal insulation.

The retractable doors are also topped with clerestory windows that perfectly frame the home’s vista of nearby Devil’s Peak, outlined against the sky.

“My husband and I are dedicated hikers, so we especially love this view,” says the homeowner.

The couple had previously lived in an old Victorian house in which, she says with a smile, “We had fixed everything – a few times!”

This much more contemporary structure, with its open plan, clever structural details and top-quality finishes, was thus an immediately attractive proposition. That said, the first owner was “a serious minimalist”, the homeowner says – almost every element of the house was either white or grey when they purchased it. So her project, in terms of adapting the home to suit herself and her husband, has been to “add layers”.

This is a rather modest way of describing the wealth of textural and visual appeal that the house has now. The existing terrazzo floors in the public areas were retained – “I’ve always loved terrazzo,” says the homeowner. To this tactile element have been added warm wood, terracotta tiling and beautiful marble agglomerate cladding.

These are all offset by crisp white interior paint, while outside in the courtyard, a charming swimming pool, that is also clad in the terracotta tiles, stands out against lush greenery and a peach-coloured patio wall.

In the bedrooms and home office, wall-to-wall carpeting was removed and replaced with engineered oak flooring. The layout of the study was reworked to enable the installation of a built-in, L-shaped desk
at which the couple can work simultaneously.

In the bathrooms, marble cladding was added for texture, and a couple of light fittings were hung that had been repurposed from elsewhere in the house during the renovation.

The final layer comprises furnishings, decor and art: handmade wooden furniture items can be found throughout the house, adding further dimensions of natural warmth to its various spaces. Every item has a story, and many elements were designed by the homeowner herself.

“A lot of the features in my house were my own little projects,” she says, and a few family heirloom pieces pop up here and there, too. Finally, there is the art, where colour is allowed to have full and free rein, bringing a fresh and dynamic energy to the interiors.

The home combines a comfortable and laidback feel with considered contemporary architecture. This is precisely the way we should interpret Le Corbusier’s famous edict for the 21st century: that as seen here, a house must be a place that is practical and functional – but to truly succeed from a design point of view, it should also gently stimulate and nurture its occupants.