Euclid's Palace

In the leafy heights of Johannesburg’s Forest Town, a classic example of Portuguese architect Pancho Guedes’ African Modernist aesthetic has been lovingly preserved

- Garreth Van Niekerk

There are few African architects who don’t count the late Portugal-born, South African-trained artist, sculptor and architect Amâncio d’Alpoim Miranda Guedes – more commonly known as Pancho Guedes – as an important design influence. Guedes’ Coleman House in Forest Town, Johannesburg, is one of a handful of homes designed and built by him in the city, resulting in it being regarded as a treasure of South African Modernist architecture.

The multilevel property was commissioned in 1984 by struggle veterans Audrey and Dr Max Coleman after their youngest son had studied architecture under Guedes’ tenure at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Architecture. Audrey recalls Guedes’ famously stubborn attitude, saying that she and Max had asked him for an earthen retirement house with no stairs to ease the way into their golden years. What they got instead was a completely white home, ‘with stairs everywhere,’ she says.

Laughing, Audrey adds that a friend down the road from their new home asked Guedes, around the same time, for a white house – and their family ended up getting the earthen house that the Colemans wanted. ‘He was very difficult to work with,’ Audrey says of Guedes, ‘but it’s been over 30 years since we finished this white house, and today we think it looks even more modern than the brand-new houses being built down the road. So it was probably worth it.’