WESTRIDGE HOUSE

Built in the early 1980s, coinciding with the conclusion of Peter’s Ndebele fieldwork, the development of the house and garden as a radical alteration to what existed, gave rise to a hybridized piece of suburban environment, ostensibly conceived as creating a ‘piece of paradise’.

The ‘Raumplan’ of Adolf Loos informed the articulation of internal inter-leading spaces while embracing special notions of diagonal extensions and linkages. Detached and semi-detached pavilions define a forecourt, entrance courts, and internal courts that function as outdoor rooms. According to the seasons, the spaces can unite, dissolving the threshold between inside and outside.

The Palladian dictum “a house is not a home unless it is a city”, applies to the layered furnishing as an autobiography of the occupants. In paraphrasing Palladio, the architect further develops the African notion of home whereby “a house is not a home unless it is a village”.

The southern sloping terraced garden and house are in dialogue with one another, becoming a collage, and synthesis of opposites. The curvilinear rough-hewn stone walls of the garden contrast the rectilinear geometries of the house. Embracing the changing light of day, these materials enhance the intimate ambiance of the house and garden.

Visits to Limpopo Province to supervise the shopping centre at Elim, had the added advantage of meeting and becoming a friend and custodian of the shaman sculptor, Jackson Hlungwani who resided in the nearby village of Mbkokato. Jackson, apart form making remarkable Christian-Judaic symbolic sculptures, spent much of his time reconfiguring the former iron age hilltop site as a pilgrimage route for the new Canaan Land. Jackson’s sculpting of this hill coincided and influenced the remodeling of the terraced garden at Westridge House.