Taking a minimalistic approach
This Cape Town pied-à-terre, near to the V&A Waterfront’s Silo Precinct, was conceptualised as a blank canvas for the owner’s growing collection of South African and African art. The precinct is anchored by the Zeitz MOCAA, which is not only the most significant art museum in the world dedicated to artists from Africa and the diaspora but is also a local architectural landmark designed by the UK’s Thomas Heatherwick.
The client brief specified a strictly minimalistic approach. With the long rectangular shape of the apartment in mind, ARRCC opted to create a unified inner shell rather than a series of separate rooms. Integrated cabinetry makes it possible to conceal storage and present sleek, uncluttered surfaces throughout the apartment.
At the same time, this approach created opportunities for ARRCC to redefine the interior architecture with variations in scale and volume, subtly sculpting into the living spaces to define distinct areas within the larger open-plan space. Perhaps the most clearly legible of these is the champagne aluminium-clad kitchen, which appears as a unified insertion within the larger white interior. Similarly defined volumes, however, have been created for the dining and lounge areas. This approach has been reprised using different materials in different areas in the apartment: joinery in the living space and sandstone in the bathrooms, for example, while maintaining their monolithic appearance. The transitional spaces between rooms are conceptualised as aesthetic ‘palate cleansers’, using variations in materials, texture and pattern.
As much as the interior architecture is an exercise in carving into space, the design of the furnishings was about creating sculptural forms. The custom furnishings, such as the monolithic limestone coffee table in the sitting area, anchor and articulate the spatial experience, sustaining the approach in an inverse expression of the same formal language.
