Street Cred

A Johannesburg architect reimagines his ranch-style family home by integrating it more fully into its lush urban locale.

- Graham Wood

From the kitchen of architect Georg van Gass’s home in Victory Park, Johannesburg, he can look up, through a large sliding window, across the street and the field opposite and down to the Braamfontein Spruit. Just on the other side of the spruit is a house he refers to as ‘GASS’s Project 001’. It was his very first job after he struck out on his own and started GASS Architecture Studios.

‘Ever since we worked on that house, I’ve wanted to live on the spruit,’ he says. When his wife, Rhoné, found this one on the opposite side of the stream from Project 001, they jumped at the chance. While the houses opposite back right onto the spruit, on this side, with the field and the mountain-biking tracks, there’s more of a ‘public domain’ as Georg calls it.

Glancing again through the windows you can also see some of the iconic towers that define Joburg’s skyline. Georg has always nursed ideas about living in the city, and has long championed the importance of creating safe public space around and between buildings.