Home Upfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon		Parabolic roof _____________________________________________________ Author: Wegelin, Hans In: Architecture SA 2013/64 Date: 2013 Pages: 47 _____________________________________________________
Parabolic roof House Dupisanie, Pretoria, Gauteng. Described in the UIA International Architect Issue 8 (1985) on Southern Africa1 as a "building with an almost poetic yet strong reading of sense of place, quality of light and shade" this house, in the east of Pretoria, built in the early 1970's, remains intriguing in the way its organic plan is covered with a sweeping parabolic ribbed sheet metal roof. Designed by the late Peter Hattingh, he describes it as follows on a placard when he was invited to exhibit at the alumni exhibition celebrating the 50th year of the Pretoria School of Architecture: "The site slopes steeply from the road down to a park graced by many magnificant white stinkwood trees. Resting amongst these trees the structure soars parabolically upwards to scoop in the sunshine, flits subtly amongst the leafy shades of nature with the delicatesy of a tracey like steel webb filled with glass and acrylic so that the boundaries of inside and outside fade in the experience of the whole." The Cor-ten steel ribbed roof sheets were shaped into a sweeping curve by snipping the ribs at the required intervals (photo 1). On plan, the curved roof shape is rectangular, leaving parts of the organic shaped plan to fall outside the curved roof line. These parts were covered with flat roofs of concrete, glass or acrylic. As can be expected when a rectangle meets an irregular shape, improvisation is necessary, leading to surprising solutions. Where space between trusses was glazed, supports for glass would often lie in different directions, e.g. top of window/door frame and purlins, the result being a warped plane, infilled with flexible acrylic (photo 2). Ceilings are either bamboo (photo 3, external) or wood board (photo 4, internal) spanning over the steel trusses. To make space for the ceiling elements between truss and roof sheet, the steel purlins were lifted on spacers. Walls are of béton brut, cast in shuttering of well-weathered sleepers. Most of the construction work was done by the original owner. Architect: Peter Hattingh 1 Including Le Corbusier's rousing message to South African architects dated 1936 to "love what is sensitive, creative, varied". Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4
Buildings linked to this article House Dupisanie, 1970's, Unknown, Unknown. pp 47