HEAVENLY INTERIORS: Inspired to create magic

15 September 2011 - 02:41 By Paul Ducan
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What defines South African style? Design guru Paul Ducan answers that question. His book 'Style Icons: Top South African Designers and their Interiors' suggests that local designers are inspired and influenced by different things. Here, in their own words, five of the featured designers describe their work

BOYD FERGUSON

HOUT BAY MANOR, A HOTEL IN HOUT BAY

"I have an incredible lust for telling the African story. And each time it is told, it needs to be new. There are as many people living in Africa as there are stories to tell. It's easy to get stuck in a groove and to show the same Africa again and again.

"It's always thrilling to get a project that has potential to do something fresh. We're desperately seeking some new truths because this world is in disarray. The answers are in the natural world. So the food, fabrics, building materials, furniture, textures and the environment must all give some new experiences of Africa and the bush.

"Hout Bay Manor, in Cape Town, is all about context and being inspired by it. It's an old Cape building with thick, wobbly walls and yellowwood ceilings by the sea in an area filled with rich and poor. There's a township just around the corner. All the things collected here reflect the Cape's history of clashing cultures. Java, Batavia, even China, get a look in.

"And then it needed a touch of Africa because, in a way, that's the only bit the Cape didn't have. So I thought, how do we take the Cape and Africanise it? How do we blend our history? So there's a coming together here. I want to belong and to show that we can be integrated. It's about looking for harmony and finding new beauty in fusion."

JULIAN AND TREVYN MCGOWAN

THEIR HOUSE IN WILDERNESS

"Black House is where we work. It is the place we bring clients to, and it is where we showcase what we are up to.

"The [original] Black House was built on an old footprint, which restricted what we could do, but many of the [design] principles are the same, and we had a double plot and the freedom to use the space. So it has a cinema, a wine cellar, 36000 litres of rain- and grey-water storage, and, unlike many of the houses along this coast, which are incredibly cold, damp and dark in winter because the sun is at the back, we pushed the land forward and put the house at the front and the pool at the back in the sun.

"Our instinctive approach to design is free and many different influences infuse it.

"Every choice we make is governed by a single question: could we have it in our own space, enjoy it, love it and live with it?

"It's never about what's commercial or easy or most financially rewarding. It's about doing what we love, what we're passionate about and what keeps us talking.

"We aim to stimulate and provoke the industry, which is critical if South African design is to have a global voice."

TONI TOLLMAN

HER HOME IN CAPE TOWN

"I love all elements of design and I think my greatest strength is putting together pieces that, in other people's eyes, don't go together. It's exciting to be brave and to do the unexpected. I don't conform or compromise. My interiors are a journey of discovery, layered and full of history as I collect different things from different places and periods.

"These are the fabric of my passion. My taste is very eclectic and it's the disparate objects that make my interiors different. Timeless design is key and when I have achieved that, that is when I consider a project successful.

"While redoing the Cape Town apartment, I demolished everything until we were left with one huge surface of concrete. I would dream about this big empty space and what to do with it. Sometimes my best ideas come when I am asleep. One idea started it: over-scaled black-and-white Caesarstone floor slabs, which I decided to put throughout the public spaces. My architect said it wouldn't work, but it has.

"Scale is probably one of the most important elements of design because, if your scale isn't right, it can change things from being perfect to just plain wrong."

KAREN ROOS

BABYLONSTOREN, A HOTEL IN FRANSCHHOEK

"THE spaces in the manor house are quite beautiful. Dark, but very functional. Babylonstoren is a whitewashed, gabled Cape Dutch house with large rooms, small windows, very thick walls and high ceilings. It has that understated Dutch quality. Sometimes people tell me it's austere. Maybe it is, but for me it's beautiful because it's simple.

"In reviving it, there was no preconceived plan. I go into a space and I start adding things I like, creating a bit of drama. And although I'm very conscious of what was there before, I'm not imprisoned by the house's past. The furniture is a mix. It's what I found in junk and antique shops, and from contemporary importers. Nothing is specifically Dutch; I didn't feel it had to be. I want my kids to enjoy this place. They won't love it if you just redo what was there before. They will only love it if you bring in what's happening now, and that's when you can allow yourself to be 'disrespectful'. There are some references to that early period, but I'm really just playing with the past, disrespecting and respecting it at the same time.

"It's all about layering; even if the layering is quite modern. I'm always conscious of the beauty of shapes, trying to find a balance and looking for the harmony among disparate things. I'm also conscious of light and shadow. Those things are very important to me.

"I think at some point South African design matured. Now no one's trying to make a statement with it. Our identity is in the way we think. It's not a conscious thing. There's a confidence about what's going on here now. You can see it everywhere."

CATHERINE RAPHAELY

JACK'S CAMP, A TENTED CAMP IN BOTSWANA

"I fell into the safari business because of a man. I wasn't working as an interior designer, I couldn't do a floor plan, but I ended up designing and styling lodges.

"That was the best part of my job, but it couldn't be the most important. Operational requirements were a constant, noisy distraction.

"I was culturally and professionally isolated as I lived in a small town on the border of Zimbabwe and Botswana for 17 years. I responded to the history and culture of my environment.

"I'm most known for the romantic post-colonial campaign safari style of Jack's Camp and San Camp, and the funky Afro-chic mud huts of Planet Baobab.

"The elements of my style are Dutch and British colonial with campaign furniture, African art and artefacts, anything related to natural history (skulls, taxidermy, ivory, tortoise shells, leather, textiles of all sorts), beadwork, embroidery, batik and more.

"At Jack's Camp in the Makgadikgadi Pan, one of the last proper tented camps in Africa, the context was the past of my former partner Ralph Bousfield's family in colonial east Africa. Inspired by the colour of leather hunting aprons and capes and their beaded artefacts, I chose shades of rich burnt umber and sienna for the interiors.

"Nature and culture affected my choices and the style of the camp. I knew that it was romantic and evocative and that it would be commercial."

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