This modern country home is a comfortable & thoroughly stylish refuge

South Africa's Route 62 is something of a road less travelled, a route that winds its way for some 800km through the mostly arid Klein (little) and Groot (great) Karoo, taking its passengers through placid small towns, ramshackle hamlets and sprawling farmlands.

It is pure, unadulterated big-sky country. One of the towns on this iconic thoroughfare is Vanwyksdorp, a typically small settlement and an oasis for the farming families who live on the homesteads surrounding it. It is close to here, 25km away, that Pietro and Amanda Russo found exactly the property for which they searched for five years.

"We love the Little Karoo. Amanda's family can trace their settler heritage to the region and both her sister and her mother live in the area," says Pietro, who is an architect and the designer of his family's Karoo off-grid escape, a pre-fabricated pod concept he named Ecomo, a marriage of the words Eco and Mobile. The property's prospectus popped up in his inbox one Sunday morning. "I drove here in pouring rain from Cape Town that same day and fell in love." A few months later they bought the plot.

It took a few more months of planning before they set the building wheels in motion. For both Pietro and Amanda, an interior designer, accessing the views was imperative to the design of their home and it was essential they felt at one with their natural surrounds rather than imposing themselves on the environment.

"We walked the plot for months before deciding where to build. Every dimension of the house is based on where we have the best view and quality of the various aspects of the landscape. The orientation, dam, mountain peaks, rock formations and flora. Even when we cook we can see the dam and Rooiberg mountain pass," says Pietro, who drew up a carefully considered plan for a space that makes as little impact on the environment as possible.

Each panel of the pod home was constructed off site and included all electrical wiring, waterproofing and insulation. This meant all the panels were delivered at once, minimising the home's carbon footprint. All cooking is on gas, all appliances are solar powered and all lighting is LED.