The original farmhouse in Parkview, Johannesburg, has been kept alive and vital thanks to the way that the family who live there allow it to evolve and grow with them It seems appropriate that Parkview's original farmhouse should belong to someone who spends her days pondering "how to bring stories of the past into the present, and telling these stories in a three-dimensional way". Lauren Segal is an author and a partner in a company that transforms historically significant sites into heritage sites, designing museums and exhibitions that make them come alive.mini_story_image_vleft1"I have dreams of living in a white modernist cube, but always end up in a house with the imprint of history," says Lauren. And so it was 18 years ago, when she and her husband moved from Yeoville to Parkview with their one-year-old son. The house they found dated from 1907, when what is now greater Joburg was all farmland.Of course a family home, even a historical one, is not a museum. The demands on it are different from other kinds of heritage sites, and the ways of treating the past in the context of a home with a family in a suburb are different from public exhibitions. "It is difficult to live with a family in a house that is over-designed and static," says Lauren. "Our needs are constantly changing and our home, which is a living organism, reflects that."Inevitably, her awareness of how past and present intersect filtered into the way she and her family have lived in their historical home. "When we moved in, the interpretation of the house was very colonial," says Lauren. It was painted white and the garden was formal, with roses and herbaceous borders. Lauren's nuanced understanding of history allowed her to see that simply pinning a historical style onto an old building did not translate into authenticity."We resituated the house in a different time and space," says Lauren. To start with, she and her husband changed its colour "from white to sand", she says. "Now it has a less colonial feel." The garden is much more eclectic now, too. "It's disorganised, but organic and indigenous," says Lauren. "But we kept in the roses as a reminder of the past."story_article_right2Over time, and as their needs have changed, the Segals have made alterations, adjusting the house to suit contemporary priorities, while respecting the past.First, the garage was converted into an office for Lauren, with architect Roger Kaplan. The office has a corrugated-iron vaulted ceiling, setting a dialogue between past and present into motion in the relationship between the pitched corrugated-iron roof of the old house and the new, curved one.Later, architect Lawrence Brown added new bathrooms and a bigger kitchen. "The genius of his design is that it blends with the 1907 structure, but is very modern as well," says Lauren. The en suite bathroom, with its own fireplace, opens onto its own private courtyard, and the kitchen also lets in light and creates a new relationship between the living spaces. Both have big windows to let in the light, but create a gentle rather than a stark contrast between old and new. "He managed to find a vernacular that worked in the present and in the past as well," says Lauren.This gentle, evolving way of offsetting the historical and the contemporary is clear enough to allow the historical parts of the house to remain legible, respecting history, while at the same time enabling the building to evolve and giving it new life.mini_story_image_vleft2In the interior, the furnishings introduce personal history into the equation, enriched with a collection of contemporary South African art. "My mother was an incredible collector of objects and things," says Lauren. "I grew up very conscious of my environment." She has kept "precious pieces from my childhood", mostly Africana designs inherited from her mother. These are combined with contemporary design and bold bursts of colour.Lauren admits, however, that the emphasis she places on objects has been influenced by working on projects like Satyagraha House, Gandhi's Joburg home, which is now a museum and guesthouse. "We worked with a team of French interior designers there," she says. "Each piece we had to select was so carefully discussed. That changed my conception of design. After that, I got rid of a lot of clutter."The Segals' art collection has evolved organically, with many of the pieces bought directly from the artists before they became famous. In it, themes concerned with the past also come though. Artists such as William Kentridge, Penny Siopis and Gerhard Marx all add to the conversation.The Segals' home situates the family's personal narratives in this historical space, while framing the past. In living here, they've negotiated a relationship with the history of their home: by letting the present into the past, they've given the past a life in the present...