We believe that a house is a place for the occupant to rest and restore body and soul. It is the pause area where you recharge your batteries. When we work with new clients, we get and understanding of what their needs and requirements for recharging are. These houses were designed for a generic client and our brief was to create homes for “a large family” to occupy.

 

We realised how much we respond to our clients when suddenly there was no client who was going to live in the house. The site was an easy, flat site to work on, apart from the fact that the rainfall in winter in Newlands turned everything into a mud bath of note. We enjoyed doing parts of the larger estate planning and making recommendations for access points to the site.

 

It is vital to have an understanding of who is going to maintain a building once completed and our lesson in this building was that ease of maintenance is a vital part of the success when designing for a generic client. Our original design allowed for 2 beautiful water features to separate the houses. In reality the water features were left to dry as the continual cost of maintenance of such a feature outstripped the pleasure of having water on display.