Contact Artefacts please if you have any comments or more information regarding this record.	Menu Home Upfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon		House Pattundeen: Shanti Niketan (House of Peace) Westville, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal JOHNSON MURRAY ARCHITECTS: Architect

Date: 1992 Type: Homestead Status: Unknown 1992 SAIA KZN Award for Architecture 1993 SAIA Award of Merit   Click to view large map Coordinates: 29°49'55.34" S 30°55'16.49" E Alt: 301m

Citation, Award of Merit by the Institute of South African Architects, 1993. Published in the Natal Institute of Architects Journal 3/1993, p2-3: Viewing this architect’s work out of the time frame set for submissions allowed the jury a rare opportunity to observe the development of a colleague’s design skills: while the entrance concept is similar to that of House Thorpe, the geometric ordering is more covert – the living accommodation radiates from a central atrium, each space given its particular ambience by detailed consideration for aspect, scale and material. This is an example of organic and caring architecture. As the architects put it, “after our natural skin and our clothes … architecture .. is to form the third layer in which we live and work”. And this house embodies values much deeper than functionalism, in fact, implicit in the brief was the instruction “to create an appropriate environment to promote the quality of family life in both the community and spiritual sense…”. While the jury had reservations about the roofscape and aspects of scale and energy efficiency, it acknowledges this building as an outstanding work of architecture. Every aspect has been thought through and integrated to create an art, and an architectural and landscaped environment exactly suited to its purpose.