EASY ELEGANCE

This Johannesburg family home balances creativity and playfulness with a sense of responsibility that sees nature and man-made structure coexist in harmony

- Graham Wood

After three years of searching unsuccessfully for a house, Johannesburg-based couple Toni and Graeme Twidale eventually found an empty plot of land freed by a subdivision with beautiful, established indigenous trees. Toni says that she realised that what she wanted, more than a house, was to live among the trees! "I wanted to see green all the time," she says.

"I wanted the outside in." So, they decided to build a house that would, more than anything, be about the site. Toni and Graeme enlisted the help of architect Gregory Katz, who is well-known locally for his creative, experimental, and often unconventional approach. Of course, Toni says: "I wanted to keep all the trees." As Katz points out, his brief, as a result, became a bit of a "mathematical puzzle".

How do you fit the dimensions of a house between the trees? Ultimately, he devised an arrangement in which he slipped two long, slim “bars” between the trees, with alternating strips of open space on either side and between them for the driveway, central courtyard and swimming pool. The two wings are connected by what the architect calls an “umbilical cord”—a glazed corridor that steps down slightly with the slope of the site.

THE LIGHTEST TOUCH

The branches of the trees reach up and over a flat concrete roof, which is planted with wavy grass, essentially lifting what would have been on the ground up a level and adding to the greenery. “When you drive in, you see the grass on the roof, and it looks like the house is underground,” says Toni.

Floor-to-ceiling glass walls let the outside in, especially when they’re opened up, transforming the house into something more like a garden pavilion, the interiors becoming part of the garden itself. At points, the trees are so close they seem as if they’re inside; sections of the eaves had to be cast with cut-outs through which the branches could grow.