Architect Greg Truen designed his own home, inspired by the optimism of the Californian mid-century modernists but reinterpreted in a contemporary African context.
Text Graham Wood
Photographs Greg Cox
From busy Kloof Nek Road in Cape Town, architect Greg Truen’s house plays a little game with passers-by. The road is one of the city’s (and the country’s) oldest – originally a supply route for soldiers linking Camps Bay and the Atlantic Seaboard with the city. The wall outside his house, facing the street, is made from stone, like the remnants of historical walls you find all around Cape Town. “Whether it’s the wall down Buitengracht Street that separates the Bokaap from the city, or the walls at the Castle or around the harbour, they all use exactly this kind of construction,” says Greg. They’re part of the fabric of the city – immediately familiar and at home on the winding road between Table Mountain and Lion’s Head. “Kloof Nek Road is a very strong representation of the urban environment,” explains Greg. “The wall tries to set up a dialogue with the history of architecture in Cape Town.”
Beyond the boundary, however, is a tantalising vision: a glass roof that peeps over the top of the wall with a kind of inverted pyramid floating inside it. “It becomes a lightbox at night,” says Greg. This mysterious “hat” on top of the house is part of the building’s response to what Greg calls its “powerful” but complex site. “It’s got a set of almost opposing forces at work,” he muses.
Once you’ve left the road, you find yourself descending a steep slope. The views around you close in but open onto an incredible panoramic vista. “You’ve got a big, expansive view of the city and the bay and the mountains in the distance,” explains Greg. “But, although the mountain surrounds you, you’re not that aware of it. You’ve kind of turned your back on it. You’ve got to look up to see it.” And that’s where the roof comes in: its origami-like structure takes the form of an inverted pyramid so that it can create clerestory windows and openings that let in views of Table Mountain and Lion’s Head behind the house.
The house is arranged on three levels, with garages and services at the bottom, bedrooms in the middle and living areas on top. In and around the rooms, there are planted courtyards – pockets of greenery – that make you feel as if you are “surrounded by landscape”. They enhance the effect of that amazing geometric roof, which Greg says is vividly animated by the sky, sun and the moon, and “reinforces the connection to nature and the mountain”. The courtyards and smaller views create a sense of layering.
“I want the building and what’s in it to reflect the cultural space that it comes from, both at a micro-level of Cape Town and a macro level of Africa,” says Greg. Greg’s firm, SAOTA, does a lot of work throughout the African continent. “I have a very contemporary view of the continent as a modern place,” he says. “It’s exciting, and I wanted the house to reflect that.”
Greg’s new house is a home in the most profound sense – an attempt to create a vision of the future for today: optimistic, sophisticated and of its place.
