Seamless indoor-outdoor living in a tranquil Joburg home

03 May 2015 - 12:51 By Graham Wood
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This travellers’ abode in Johannesburg reveals that, far from overemphasising the exotic, travel can bring a home a sense of rootedness and identity.

Travel photographer and world-renowned rock climber Marianne Schwankhart is often away from home. She's half of the Sunday Times's duo of local travel gurus, Girls Gone Wild, and whenever she can, she's traversing the globe seeking out ever higher and steeper rock faces to scale. On top of that, she and her husband, Oliver, travel together quite a lot, especially in and around South Africa.

But over the past decade, as they have created their home together, rather than starting to appear as transitory as all the other temporary lodgings they occupy (an occupational hazard for frequent flyers) it has developed a sense of character and rootedness that surely all travellers must crave at the backs of their minds.

It took shape gradually. When Oliver bought it, before he met Marianne, it was a somewhat dilapidated single-storey, flat-roofed house in the Spanish Revival style. It had stucco walls with decorative brickwork along the tops, and plenty of courtyards, turrets and arches over the garages, doors and windows. Oliver recalls it was advertised as a "handyman's dream".

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He admits that he bought it more for the trees in the garden than for the house itself. "It feels like a forest," says Oliver. "A building you can change..." When he and Marianne began doing so, they had a plan drawn up by architect Wilh van der Merwe of Wilh + Co Architects. "We did it bit by bit," says Oliver, "and tinkered with the plan as we lived there and got a feel for the space."

Apart from straightening out the arches and generally imparting a more modern look and feel to the house, the emphasis was on the garden and creating inside-outside living areas. "We want to feel like we are living in a garden," says Marianne. They added a bedroom upstairs with a balcony overlooking the treetops, and another room above the garage, plus a deck and swimming pool.

"We've probably put as much time into the garden as we have into the house," says Oliver. He and Marianne are succulent enthusiasts, collecting and bringing home beautiful euphorbias, aloes, cotyledons and cacti from their travels. "Nowhere in the world do you get succulents like you do in South Africa," says Oliver. The garden has become an absolute wonderland of succulent beds.

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They've crept into the house, too, and are particularly happy clustered in the outside areas and courtyards in a huge collection of planters by renowned ceramicist Dina Prinsloo. She designs them especially for indigenous succulents. Their shapes, although often modern and geometric, mimic the rocky crevasses the plants' roots would seek out in nature. "They have almost become part of the architecture," says Oliver.

The interiors reveal a strong feeling for natural and local materials, especially wood, organic forms and cleverly reused materials. The sleek mid-century modern-style Love chair - created by Ilovani near Plettenberg Bay and made from wine-barrel staves - is a good example. "It was not consciously done to look local," says Marianne. "It depended on what was accessible and what we like."

Large, striking photographs adorn the walls - some from Marianne's travels and others by colleagues and friends. She has a framing studio at the back of the house, and with some colleagues has devised a range of beautiful wooden frames with a unique joint in maple, ash, walnut, mahogany and American birch, carrying through her feeling for the natural textures and colours of wood (visit dragontree.co.za). The walls have become an ever-changing showcase for their work.

The result is that rare thing - a traveller's home that reflects its owners' journeys, adventures and interests, but, rather than taking on the sense of elsewhere, provides roots and a proper sense of home to return to after all that exploring. And a launchpad for the next journey.

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