 Contact Artefacts | MenuHomeUpfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon | Springfarm Game Lodge BRITZ SCHOLES ABRAMOWITCH DU TOIT HOFFE: Architect |  | ||||||
| |||||||||
| THE CITATION FROM THE AWARD OF MERIT PANEL OF JUDGES READS :- "The Standard Bank Springfarm Game Lodge resolves a problem of quite a different nature. Here the problem was not spatial containment, but spatial expanse. Five elements needed to be sited on a game farm: an arrival court, guarded by ostriches on the day of our visit; a communal lounge/dining room/bar; two paired double bedroomed units; and a swimming pool. Each element is sensitively positioned to afford a series of differing views of the surrounding steeply rolling Highveld. The sense of privacy within the collective whole is carefully planned to subtly enable either a shared or private experience. Euclidian geometry informs and marks the contrast between the formal architectural interventions and the informal natural, as found, landscape. A sensitivity which both marks and heightens the interface between the two. The architectural elements are fragmented and apparently scattered, in reality carefully positioned, about the arrival court so as to ensure the intervening architecture at no time dominates the landscape. Measured open spaces scale and make subservient the servant elements with nature's domain. In itself, the siting of the elements would make this project meritorious, but there is more. The architecture rises out of the landscape as stone monoliths capped in thatch, scaled to the adjacent indigenous vegetation with the ease of huts in any Highveld landscape. The luxurious contrasting theatre of the generous, well-appointed interiors hidden until entering the various units, much as in any traditional tented encampment. Finally, there is a pool, designed with a lost edge so as to capture and mirror the western skies in a double celebration of nature and man at play. Nature made nearly civilized for the urbanite, certainly so for your three adjudicators". All truncated references not fully cited below are those of Joanna Walker's original text and cited in full in the 'Bibliography' entry of the Lexicon. |
|
