SPACE CRAFT

A Futuristic Ocean Home in South Africa Becomes a Stunning Gallery for Its Owner’s Collection of Modern Art and Furniture.

- Graham Wood

A remarkable sight greets visitors to the rolling coastal dunes of Keurboomstrand, north of Plettenberg Bay in South Africa’s Western Cape province. Some liken the pristine white and organically shaped building to a space station, others to a ship afloat.

Architect Lesley Carstens, who, together with husband Silvio Rech, designed the remarkable structure, offers a different take. “It looks as if it has been eroded like a piece of whalebone on the beach.”

Rech suggests that, from certain angles, you might discern the forms or motion of a pair of swimming whales. “It has the feeling of an organic object or being,” he adds.

The eye-catching building is something of a contradiction: it stops people in their tracks, yet its wavelike form is remarkably unobtrusive and sensitive to its natural surroundings.

Dubbed K Cottage – although, at three stories high, it’s substantially larger than a beach cottage – it is the vacation home of South African-born, UK-based activist investor and fund manager Julian Treger.

A prominent art and design collector, Treger is also passionate about architecture. Although he originally considered a highly minimalist design, he switched his decision to organic architecture “given the undulating nature of the hills, the mountain behind and the wave motion of the sea.”

At the same time, because he is interested in the history and DNA of the designs he loves, the concept was also to be an exploration of the roots and development of organic architecture.