ANGULAR - FOREST TOWN HOUSE

HIDDEN BEHIND A SIMPLE WHITE WALL AND TOWN'S FOREST ABUNDANT HIGHVELD SUMMER GREENERY IS THIS MODERNIST DESIGNED IN THE EARLY 1980s BY PANCHO SHOWSTOPPER GUEDES.

- JO BUITENDACH

Architect Pancho Guedes's love of complex geometric angles is clear in the design of this Johannesburg home, with the statement chimney stack a thoughtful and eye-catching addition.

KNOWN FOR HIS SCULPTURAL AND WELL-THOUGHT-OUT BUILDINGS, PANCHO GUEDES WAS INSPIRED BY SURREALISM, AFRICAN ART AND ARCHITECT ANTONI GAUDÍ.

THE COLEMANS are not your average suburbanites - although chatting to the humble Audrey Coleman, now 90, you wouldn't guess it. She and her late husband, Max, were active human-rights advocates during the apartheid years, both working for the Detainees' Parents Support Committee, with Audrey also a long-standing and celebrated member of the legendary humanrights organisation, Black Sash.

An important piece of South African architectural history, House Coleman sits comfortably among the greenery of historic Forest Town; a courtyard filled with palm trees, banana leaf plants and strelitzias is a tropical oasis-like space; while not large, the home certainly packs a design punch with its unfussy white exterior, angular lines and porthole windows.

House Coleman has major cred too. Built in the early 1980s, it's a masterpiece of clean lines and geometric shapes and, though tailor-made to be its owners' retirement home, it's also a piece of South African design history. "Our son Colin was a student at Wits University and insisted that Pancho Guedes was the only person for the job," says Audrey of their choice of architect.

A large light-filled kitchen leads into an impressive dining room. Guedes designed the doors, which include cathedral-glass windows, himself. A lifelong fan of art and design, homeowner Audrey Coleman had the chairs - inspired by Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Hill House chairs - specially made.