Tree House - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 1999

Inspired by site and forest, this house in Cape Town offers numerous interpretations of living.

A factor common to many of the projects we looked at was the drama and beauty of their sites. Perhaps this was natural with relatively young architects working on small schemes for private clients. No site we saw was more dramatic than that of the Tree House on the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. The building has recently been discussed in these pages (AR November 1999, p82), so this is merely a summary of the jury's account.

The architects, Anya and Macio Miszewski, have a reverence for trees, which, they say, 'are precious in Africa': the places where elders meet, where children gather at midday, places offering shelter from implacable elements. Next to a little valley, the site has a canopy of umbrella pines, the dark green spreading trees which seem emblematic of southern Africa. The trees became the theme of the house. Five tree-like structures with concrete trunks and round timber branches anchor the roof to the ground. A great clerestory runs round the whole living room, allowing wonderful views of the mountain flanks.

We were all impressed by the quality of the space, materials, craftsmanship and the notion of the main space of the house as a grove under its abstracted trees, which relate to the real green ones outside. But David Chipperfield argued convincingly that the tree structure is in a sense merely decorative because the external walls with their steel frame structure are virtually strong enough to support the roof by themselves.

ARCHITECT

MISZEWSKI ARCHITECTS