CITY CALM

A former magazine editor has created an inner city oasis a veritable greenhouse and personal library, artfully styled with favourite objet gathered over the years

It was a busy day in the heart of Cape Town when Sumien Brink – a former magazine editor with an unerring nose for recognising potential in a space – bravely entered the incongruously named Impala House, with its modest but beguiling pink marble foyer, to view an office space. The lift opened directly into an expansive room, literally stopping her in her tracks.

“I was simply flabbergasted,” she says. “I had no idea proportions like this still existed in the city.”

The fact that the former office had only rudimentary bathrooms and a tiny kitchen didn’t deter her from taking on the challenge of transforming this blank canvas into an extraordinary apartment.

Nor did the interior designer she engaged for the makeover project, Etienne Hanekom, bat an eyelid when most of us might have run a mile. Etienne's first move was to install corrugated Perspex dividers to create two bedrooms - a smart, inexpensive way to carve up a large area.

To provide focus in the entrance, a striking photograph taken by award-winning photojournalist Guy Tillim in Dakar, Senegal, was enlarged to become wall art. Tillim is known for his work focusing on troubled parts of Africa and his photographs resonate deeply with Sumien, who remembers visiting Mozambique on blissfully carefree holidays as a child, but being aware of simmering unrest and the start of the architectural decay that still exists today.