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Wildehoek Artist's Residence, Cape Town
Sector
Residential
Completion
June 2009
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Highlights & Achievements
Assisted with documentation for buildings carefully stepped into a steep, forested site, gaining experience in managing level transitions, topographic integration, and site-sensitive design detailing.
Supported the use of traditional materials—rough plaster, brick vaults, timber detailing—learning to balance local craftsmanship with modern performance and regulatory standards.
Helped coordinate a complex arrangement of structures including the manor house, studio, stables, and staff quarters, developing skills in aligning plans, sections, and elevations across a compound masterplan.
Gained experience responding to unexpected site conditions such as the discovery of an underground watercourse, contributing to revised layouts and supporting team coordination during mid-construction changes.
Company
Martin Kruger & Associates
Set against the slopes of Chapman’s Peak, this residence responds to its rural equestrian context with a composition of long, barn-like forms arranged across a steep, forested site. The project engages with Cape vernacular traditions through a contemporary lens—whitewashed walls, vaulted ceilings, and a strong connection between built form and landscape.
The brief called for radical simplicity and a farmyard typology. The result is a series of buildings – main house, studio, stables, and staff quarters – organised around a series of courtyards and linked by defined transitional spaces. Materials are deliberately tactile: rough plaster, red klompje brick, timber detailing. Vaults and brickwork recall traditional craft while supporting passive thermal performance.
A central vaulted gallery—14 metres long and glazed at both ends—acts as the spatial hinge between public and private zones, framing views and creating a moment of architectural drama. Interior and exterior thresholds are blurred, with sculptural elements integrated throughout the site to activate in-between spaces.
The design responds to both place and climate: buildings step with the terrain, and roof forms manage prevailing winds and seasonal rain. An unexpected underground watercourse forced the relocation of the house mid-construction, underscoring the project’s embeddedness in its environment.
