Serengeti House, Johannesburg

This Johannesburg home is located on a suburban golf estate, in South Africa. It is a perfectly balanced application of earthy textures against high-gloss finishes and raw material contrast with refined elements.

“The Brief”, says Rudolph van der Meulen of Nico van der Meulen Architects, “was to create a stylish family home with ecologically sound design that maximized indoor-outdoor living to take full advantage of Johannesburg’s legendary eight-month summer.”

It is a double storey home with an open-plan living area downstairs, an upstairs pajama lounge, a study and four bedrooms, all of them en-suite. The three family bedrooms are upstairs, while the guest room is quietly tucked away downstairs.

The home combines the use of rock, steel, wood and glass – classic modernist design elements re-mixed for new applications. The front of the home features a rusted-steel-clad wall, cleverly mounted on tracks so that it slides back to reveal the garage.

Visual continuity is provided through the use of rusted-steel finishing on the entrance and upper-level window frames.Wood is used on the home’s walkway and its bathroom flooring. There is a Balau wooden walkway from the street to the front door, which carries you over a Koi pond that fronts the house.

The master bathroom also has Balau wooden-floor decking. When you slide back the glass doors you walk right onto the terrace, it visually creates one unified space. It is also very easy to keep clean. We avoided the use of tiles in the bathrooms, opting instead for back-sprayed glass. For the kids’ room, we used lime green to add some visual punch.

The home’s lower level interacts with the back garden’s pool and dining terrace through the use of floor-to-ceiling slide-back glass walls that create a seamless interactive space. A kitchen window-hatch opens onto the barbeque area, providing an almost modern twist on the old-school roadhouse.

When viewed from the street, the home’s central core is transparent, book-ended by imposing solid shapes on either side; you can look right through it onto the golf course beyond its back garden.

Ultimately, the home’s environment informs its location – not its design or decor. Above all, it provides a subtle sense of understated glamor through its visual accents, successfully combining with the hassle-free maintenance of its durable building materials and maximized indoor-outdoor living application – a winning trilogy that is perfect for modern living.

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Courtesy of Nico van der Meulen Architects for Gloobbi.

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