Sea House

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Sea House

Firm

Sarah Calburn Architects

Type

Residential › Private House

A private retreat for two overhanging the sea in Betty's Bay near Cape Town in South Africa, this building extends the plane of the land into a constructed promontory. The roof is planted, the habitable zone below glazed, and the land carved out behind into a protective terraced courtyard. The house is calibrated to total immersion in the wild dynamic of the Southern Cape landscape.As is usual along this coastline, the site is held in suspension between the vast plane of the sea to the south, and the equally vast mountain range to the north. Light and a multiplicity of views are put into tension.The sea side of the building responds to the sublime scale and 180 degree sweep of the sea by overhanging the cliff and the pounding sea in a vast vertiginous curve. The perceptual affects of this curve are twofold - as you move through the house, more and more view is revealed. As you step out of the house onto the lowered balcony that runs along the front, you are violently thrust, at every point, beyond the receding building, and into the wild space of the view.The mountain side of the building is carved out into ‘coves’ - smaller curved courtyards that offer wind protection, privacy, intimacy, and which respond to the scale of the land-ward: decks, sun-bathing, bathroom, everyday tasks, entry. Entrance stairs gather one gradually below a tentacle of the planted roof. The pool divides the two sides of the building along the sea front. Curving overhangs are mirrored by concrete floor planes that suggest movement routes and capture views in fishbowl symmetries. Garden terraces mimic contours and both widen and deepen the sheltered courtyard from the raised plane of arrival.The roof is planted with indigenous coastal fynbos, and a boardwalk covers the main drainage route. Uncannily, the roof fades into the further coastal landscape. It is from here that the coves and beaches in the architecture become readable, and the garden terraces finally mimic lines of foam in the sea as waves form and dissipate off the rocky coast line far below.This house extends a body of work which treats both landscape and architecture simultaneously in a conscious drive to heighten perception. It extends the language of the Villa Incognito and Fynbos House into the fishbowl world of the urban Cocoon House and the tentacular exploration of the Watershed House.

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Sea House

Sea House

Product Spec Sheet

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