City House 
Cape Town

Restoration and renovations
350 sqm
2020 - 2021


A soft-touch renovation of an already altered semi-detatched Victorian home in Cape Town. The home had already been rather drastically altered by its previous occupant: architect and Gordon-Matta Clarke/Moleman fan, who sadly no longer with us and whose brain we would have enjoyed picking during the design and renovation project if we could have. ⁠⁠
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The design restores the front half of the Victorian house whilst allows his previous extension to open up and reveal its un-originalness. We have created new openings where he had casually cut through gypsum walls and maintained the double height rooms he created, only resurfacing and tidying edges. ⁠⁠His left vast collection of hard-wood timber was used to create new thresholds, handrails and other details. ⁠⁠
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Demolition and new-builld was limited to bare minimum, instead  there was focus on resurfacing and revealing existing building parts in order to extend their lifetime and create a family-focussed home, whilst allowing the Victorian and the previous-owners histories to reveal themself.