Thoughts & Projects
Perspectives on architecture, design culture, and the spaces that shape our lives.
Rooms That Have to Grow Up With the Family
A nursery becomes a teenager's room becomes a home office within a decade or two. Designing for a room's whole lifespan, not just its first purpose.
Where to Put the Wine, and Other Entertaining Questions
Entertaining spaces get requested constantly and specified vaguely. A closer look at what actually makes a home work for hosting.
Outdoor Kitchens and the Braai Area, Done Properly
A braai area is one of the most-used spaces in a Southern African home and one of the most often under-designed. What actually makes one work.
Architect or Draughtsman: What the Difference Actually Means
Both can produce a set of building plans. The difference shows up long before the drawings, in training, liability, and the quality of the questions asked.
Load Shedding Changed the Architecture Brief
Years of scheduled power outages have made energy resilience a default line item in residential briefs, not an optional extra. What that's actually changed about how houses get designed.
What a House Looks Like After Dark
Most design decisions get tested against daylight photography. A house is actually lived in for a large share of its hours after dark. How we design for that second version of a building.
Landscape Isn't Decoration — It's Structure
Gardens are too often treated as the last decision on a project, after the architecture is finished. Why that sequencing produces worse houses.
Renovate or Rebuild: How We Actually Decide
Clients often arrive with a fixed idea of whether they want a renovation or a full rebuild. The honest answer is usually more nuanced than either.