House Gibson, Parkview, Johannesburg, SA
2003
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The existing house was positioned centrally on a quarter acre site in Parkview with outbuildings to the back of the house. The Clients brief was to enlarge the house substantially to incorporate their accommodation requirements without losing too much garden space. The existing house was retained as a relic in the middle of the site with an alteration and additions that aimed at distinguishing the old from the new.
The accommodation has been decentralised and positioned around the site to become a complex of different sized buildings of which the existing house is one. The different buildings form courtyards between them optemising and structuring the use of external space and reversing the typical ‘figure ground’ of a suburban Johannesburg house.
The external face of the bedroom building has a double skin. A composite of standard steel doors and a steel screen wrap around the building and are positioned 600mm apart, creating a narrow balcony between the glass and the screen. The screen has a dual purpose of security and sun filtering. A solid bay projects from the transparent face of the building, reversing the traditional bay windows of the existing house.