Back to Earth

A barn-like farmhouse with a colossal kitchen and organic vegetable garden has been lovingly crafted by its architect owner, who saw the beauty in reusing salvaged materials

- graham wood

WHEN THE DE WIT FAMILY moved to this farm north-west of Johannesburg, South Africa, they took the question of how to build, and live, very seriously. The original farmhouse on the property got the architect owner, Lee, thinking: it wasn’t the kind of spot you could return to nature; it wasn’t beautiful, nor did it have any architectural merit or historical value.

Still, it didn’t make sense simply to demolish it for those reasons alone – plus Lee felt an ancestral connection to the area. The solution the De Wits landed on was a simple one: they would use what was already there as the basis for creating a home that had a garden and a kitchen at its centre – here, the home is the kitchen.

Its adjacent living area is envisioned as a kind of lean-to with views of the garden. On the other axis is the bedroom, housed in a converted garage that also plays second fiddle to the kitchen. The bathroom, meanwhile, was repositioned to occupy the verandah.

GROWTH MINDSET