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Click to view map Coordinates: | Buffelsdrift: Sketched notes of an historical background. (Facts taken from Thys Hattingh in Die Burger 19 August 2000 p.4) The original farm was a circular ‘erfplaas’ occupied for far longer than before it was measured out by the land-surveyor HT Schutte. Its area was 2 400 ha. This was sold proportionally to Izak van der Vyver who acquired seven twelfths of the original farm, PJ Nel three twelfths and JT Olivier two twelfths. The original Title Deed shows a T-shaped house with two outbuildings and eight morgen (? Ha) garden between the homestead down to the Swartberg River to the south. The farmhouse was erected by its original owner, Izak Wilhelm van der Vyver (1807-1869) in 1852. The Butterworth family had an historical connection with the farm of over 100 years. The Welsh family of the Butterworths, Albert and his brother, arrived in Plettenberg Bay in 1816. Albert was a transport-wagon rider and so arrived in Ladismith. He was captivated by the place and decided to stay. His 14-year old son, Gideon, boarded with the Vyvers. In time Gideon married Susan Heath, daughter of English immigrants to the Cape. Their son, Izak van der Vyver Butterworth grew up with Izak and ‘Outannie’ van der Vyver who were childless, and treated him as their own son. When they died Gideon inherited the larger portion of the farm while his son Izak inherited the farmhouse.
The Winkelplaas (Farm Store) property, part of the original farm, has a building with a gable bearing the date ‘1835’ and can be assumed to be the original farm homestead. It is possible that this was then the original home of Willem van der Vyver who owned the major portion of the farm. [The farm was in the possession of the Kramer family where Solly Kramer (the renowned Liquor Merchant) was born in 1914 (25 November) and where he grew up. He left the farm in about 1926 where the farm was devastated by drought, forcing his parents, then ostrich farmers, to relocate to Touws River for eighteen months, then Worcester in 1928 (Aly Schultze, Hermanus Times Friday 16 July 2005 ‘Solly Kramer: a headstand a day keeps the doctor away’).] By 2000 it was the property of Buddy Swiegelaar, Credit Manager (Commercial) of Nedbank, who had intended to live there but never did so. At the time of writing of the article the farm had been sold to DC le Roux of Welkom, Free State for a sum of R250 000. By 2014 it was back on the market for sale. Fransen describes the house as follows: There are three old buildings here, all with Prince Albert type gables (holbol with horizontal string courses). These of the T-shaped homestead are enriched with dentils. It has a massive loft steps at the side and original holbol stoepbankies. Above the front door appears the inscription IWDV (Izak Wilhelm van der Vyver) 1852, a date which tallies with the plaster-framed woodwork (although the halved front door with its small-paned fanlight and fluted and dentilled entablature looks much older). Of interest is the scalloped timber band below the eaves [removed in the restoration]. Nearby, across the road, there is a small graveyard with three gravestones in the form of gables, the earliest dated 1855. (Fransen, 2004). [Note: All original decorative plasterwork, features such as steps and stoepbankies etc were retained in the restoration]. The project was recently submitted for the Seventh International DOMUS Restoration and Preservation Prize in 2020. Here follows the Architect's Statement:Architect’s Statement Buffelsdrift farm lies 15km to the west of Ladismith Klein Karoo. Several historical Cape Dutch buildings were built on the farm during the mid-1800's. Greg Truen from Saota architects bought the farm during 2017 and appointed me to manage the renovations and restoration of the farm. The referral came via Ashley Lilly a heritage consultant and colleague from the past. My background in mud construction made me a suitable choice. Greg planned to take the neglected property and turn it into a functional olive farm. The 4 hectares of fallow lucern fields opposite the main house were to be rehabilitated and planted. > The 6 historical buildings had been constructed by a combination of the poured earth method slightly different than the more known sun-dried masonry brick method also used. The buildings had been plastered by a plethora of different types of plaster through the years and the first step was to strip all plaster and assess the state of the mud structures. All structural damage was fixed with clay collected from the dry earth irrigation dam which was obviously also the original source of clay the buildings had been built with and replastered in lime and sand as was traditionally done. The buildings found in their pre-restored state included some horizontally proportioned steel doors and windows added during the buildings recent history which is foreign to Cape Dutch architecture. Several new "stoeps" (porches) had been added constructed in a confused eclectic manner. A modern bathroom was added at the very important position of the connection between the 2 roofs forming a’T’. The bathroom was demolished to restore the building to its original state with a series of rectangular rooms with direct access each to the other. Opposite the road, facing the main house, is a simple rectangular box shaped building constructed of sun dried brick. Its original function was most likely a tobacco drying shed at first only 1,5 storeys in height. Before the restoration half a storey of fired bricks was added to lift the building to a double storey building with upper mezzanine level. A modern bathroom and electricity was added without care. These were removed. The buildings eclectic mix of patched cement plasters was stripped internally and externally and replaced with traditional lime plaster. A clumsily constructed concrete staircase was demolished and replaced with a new contemporary CNC [Computer Numerical Control fabricated] staircase. As in the main house steel-framed doors and windows had been used in several previous renovations. It was replaced with new custom-made sash windows referencing the panes from the main house and double opening French doors with parliament hinges. Stoeps and decks constructed from creosoted poles had been added to the east. These were removed to restore the building back to its monolithic original state. A new bathroom with timber drywall and terrazzo by Canatta & Sons was inserted filling the width of the building on the mezzanine level. The exterior was painted with white wash with added red pigment to reference the pink Luis Baragan is well known for. Creolization Creolization is the natural order of human cultures. Humans are nomads, always encountering foreign cultures. In their meetings there is hybridization, not only through cultural osmosis - that is, in order to survive, the newly-arrived need to understand, adapt and adopt indigenous knowledge, particularly as this relates to food and shelter - but in the process the indigenes too acquire new understanding - reverse cultural osmosis. South African society, and in particular its architectural vernacular - of which Cape Dutch the most internationally famous - serves as just such an example. In a global village the trend is a stylistic homogeneity. But the vernacular traditions persist, however more rapidly tempered by readily available information. Yet contemporary vernacular evidences a persistence of these traditions, not as stylistic tropes, but through continuing hybridization of technologies and techniques adapted to current practice and materials while being informed by the inner logic of their appropriate use of their place with the locally available materials and employing of available skills. This project is just such an expression.
What follows is a list of precedents that influenced this project: It received the gold medal (with one other of the seventy-odd international entries). Here follows the citation of the Adjudicators:
Buffelsdrift farm is a structure typical of South African culture, born of the intermingling of different cultures and building techniques. It is made up of several constructions dating from the mid-nineteenth century built on a large agricultural estate that had recently been refurbished and replanted. The original buildings, made of poured earth, had undergone several modifications to the plastering and roofing, as well as to the whole, due to incongruous additions. The restoration project attempted to clear such incongruities, returning, moreover, to traditional construction techniques. Thus, the walls, where broken down, were restored using clay and re-plastered using local techniques; in the same way, a broad roof pitch that had in recent times been covered with corrugated metal sheet was reconfigured using the original thatching technique with local plant materials. The end result is particularly convincing in the redefinition of the volumes within a natural landscape that is an integral part of the design. Buffelsdrif – an anatomy of a vernacular When Jaco first took me to be see Buffelsdrif it had had its plaster removed. This was necessitated by the discovery of white ants that had worked their way up, through the straw binding of the mudded walls, to the rafters. There were, too, that bane of the Cape home-owner – wood-borers in the roofing timbers. The sacrificing of authentic material is often dismaying in restoration projects, but in this instance a defensible decision in that it ensured the retention of the core structure and original woodwork and timbers. The whole body of the house was then tented and fumigated, facilitating ingress of the poisons to the depths of the structure. This flaying of the core also gave opportunity for investigating the anatomy of the house and so reveal the palimpsest of episodes of construction. The main body of the house – unsurprisingly - seems to be its primary part: a long cottage in the Cape vernacular cottage tradition. A flat-Arched opening at the eastern end was revealed, possibly indicating that that was the hearth, possibly with a komyntjie or additional alcove cooking place with external chimney. More interesting was that the method of construction was a monolithic mud with embedded lath lintels, some distance above the present openings for doors, windows and ‘muurkaste’ (alcove wall cupboards), some of the obviously intended openings never inserted. This method of construction, known as cob, or - in the Anglophone world - Devonshire cob. When the restoration of Buffeldrift commenced the building had an original nineteenth century corrugated iron roof. However the original timbers of the thatched roof remained within its carcass and it was decided to reuse these and re-thatch the house, both for aesthetic and climatic comfort. All the original door and window frames – invariably of imported pine and in all likelihood pre-manufactured - had been built into prepared opening with sundried green bricks, these also used for all the finer work as well as the gables, embedded in dagha (clay mortar). Once this had all been done the walls were then plastered over with a lime and sand plaster cement, all finished in the traditional lime-wash. The preparation of lime-wash was itself an art, and most places had a permanent lime pit where the anhydrous lime was slaked, when, as it heated from the chemical reaction, tallow (rendered fat of animals) was added to enhance its waterproofing qualities. Surfaces were lime-washed from this pit with slap-dash brushing, at least every year, for both reasons of aesthetics and maintenance while also acting as an antibacterial agent. With the lack of documentary proof or archaeological evidence, any suggested chronology of the development of this homestead is speculative and so involves a reading of its fabric. We however have as evidence of its possible evolution the various emanations of Cape Dutch, from the lowly cottages of the labouring classes and fishermen through to the stately manors of the Cape winelands that epitomize the glory of the landed gentry and their accumulated wealth. Perhaps this was originally a simple longhouse thatched cottage, those that one encounters at the old Mission settlement of Zuurbraak on the way up to the Tradouw Pass and Barrydale from Swellendam in the Overberg, of which the Ladismith community were once church congregants. The cottages of Zuurbraak are witness to the development of the simple Cape cottage, with its variations of straight thatched roofs, through the ‘skaapboud’ (leg-o-mutton or eyebrow) gable, to the pedimented semicircular front gable, through to all manner of decorative embellished styling to which this style-bearing element lends itself. The ensemble of buildings of Buffelsdrif display three distinct gable types. My reading is that the simpler rudimentary hol-bol (concave-convex) gables with their semicircular pinnacles of the out-buildings probably reflect the earliest styling. The end gables of the main body of the homestead are similar but more refined, for which Fransen has coined the term ‘Prince Alfred Gable’. Either the shaping of the outbuildings has been corrupted over time or the main building was refigured to be more precise somewhere in a past time of refurbishment. The most decorative, strangely located to the rear of the house, is the central concavo-convex gable of the T-wing (see Alphabet plans) where the kitchen is located, with its circular capping and string-moulded bottom chord which relates it to many of those of the trading family of the Barry’s establishments as found down the route to Port Beaufort, the woolshed (Barry Barn) of Port Beaufort itself, and many of the buildings which they had in Swellendam (see, for instance Barry House). This should not surprise us, as bartering trade existed between the coast and Ladismith, dried fish and grains coming from the Strandveld and the Overberg respectively, while Ladismith supplied deciduous dried fruits and witblitz (a stoked fermented fruit and distilled aqua-vit). This gable probably comes from the time that the thatch was replaced with corrugated iron, somewhere in the later nineteenth century, when the mass production of British industrialization reached South Africa’s shores as ballast, exchanged as produce was loaded from our shores. This has been replaced with traditional Cape reed thatching (dekriet), harvested from the vast fields at Albertinia. Of the original poplar timbers of the roof construction and fragments of thatching remained beneath the iron roof and the timbers were augmented with locally sourced poplar so that the thatched roof might be re-instated. All of these stories of its original construction are retained in the adaptive conservation to give the Buffelsdrif ensemble another cycle of life and another layer of history for the twenty-first century, adding its own episode to that long tale. While much of the seventies refurbishment has been stripped out as being considered unsympathetic and inappropriate, yet spatially it remains with the modernization of the kitchen section where the open roof space in the volume is retained. Where external plaster was removed it is redone in traditional lime and sand plaster, replicating the undulating surface, which characterizes the Cape Dutch, catching shadows in its falls, so softening the harsh Karoo glare. The gables and architraves are original and preserve the material and craftsmanship of their time. All the furniture and fittings of windows and doors have been refurbished and retained or re-instated. As in the art of écorché, some of the exposed internal fabric has been left laid bare, so that others might appreciate and enjoy its stories. The house remains a home, a contemporary embodiment of what it has always been. (FISHER, 2020) [A contemporary press release. Author unidentified] Restored Buffelsdrift Farm wins international conservation award Aug 24 2020 Buffelsdrift Farm. The restoration of the ensemble of heritage buildings on Buffelsdrift recently won the gold medal at the seventh edition (2019) of the international Domus Restoration and Conservation Award in Italy. The award recognises ‘excellence in the field of restoration, redevelopment and architectural and landscape recovery at an international level’. Located west of Ladismith in the arid Klein Karoo region of the Western Cape, the restoration was done by SAOTA and Jaco BOOYENS Architect and it involved a cluster of Cape buildings in a valley beneath the Swartberg mountain range. Consisting of a main house, two barns and a store, a short way off is a flat-roofed (Brakdak) building, typical of the Ladismith style, which was originally used as a wine store. The other structures on the property include a contemporary shed, a cottage (further up a hill) and a graveyard. The house, the barns and the wine store were all restored. SAOTA director, Greg TRUEN, acquired the farm in 2016. While minor additions and modern alterations had been made to the buildings, the original house was “in good condition, considering” and the barns were “fundamentally untouched”. The main house boasts evidence of earlier refurbishments in the 1970s which were stripped out while modern kitchen and bathrooms were inserted in an adaptive approach to conservation. A new pump house was added near the dam wall of the property and its design and construction were an experiment in contemporary architecture using the same materials and techniques as the heritage building, including poured mud or ‘cob’ walls as well as brick vaulted roofs. The landscaping around the house took the form of a series of low terraces. Licenses to graze livestock on the land date back to the mid-1700s and it is evident that the land was farmed before the 1800s. The original circular farm was divided into smaller parts over the years with the main house on this portion on the farm dating back to 1852. The date and initials IWDV, Isak Wilhelm van der Vyver are inscribed above the door. The Van der Vyver family were associated with Buffelsdrift as far bas as 1768 when they first leased the farm. Incidentally in 1852, Ladismith was proclaimed, unlocking growth and development in the area. Fruit trees, grapes and other crops were farmed in the valley and by the late 1800s and the early 20th century, crops were largely abandoned in favour of ostrich farming because of the international ostrich feather boom. The collapse of fashion for ostrich feathers, war and drought brought economic devastation and the once-bustling valley was largely abandoned. Today, olives are commonly farmed in the valley. Hans FRANSEN’s seminal study, ‘The Old Buildings of The Cape’ records “three buildings … all with Prince Albert-type end-gables (holbol with horizontal string courses)”. The main T-shaped homestead, he says, “has massive loft steps at the side and original holbol stoepbankies”. He notes the inscription and dating above the front door of the main house which “tallies with the plaster-framed woodwork – although the halved front door with its small-paned fanlight and fluted and dentiled entablature looks much older.”) Architectural historian Roger C FISHER, Professor Emeritus of Architecture, University of Pretoria Schoo, who visited the farm wrote an unpublished account of his observations. ‘Buffesldrift – An Anatomy of a Vernacular’ details aspects of its construction and history. He says that a speculative reading of architectural fabric of the buildings led him to suspect that the house “was originally a simple longhouse thatched cottage” that was subsequently added to. The outbuildings, which probably predate the house, have “simpler, rudimentary holbol gables with … semi-circular pinnacles” and those of the “main body of the homestead are similar but more refined.” “The most decorative, strangely located to the rear of the house, is the central hol-bol (concavo-convex) gable of the T-wing where the kitchen is located, with its circular capping and string-moulded bottom chord, for which Fransen has coined the term ‘Prince Alfred Gable,’” he writes. He suspects that it dates to the time when the original thatch roof was replaced with corrugated iron “somewhere in the later nineteenth century”. Truen notes that gables of the main body of the house have semi-circular tops. Fransen also points out the unusual shutter on the fanlight. Additional research by Booyens revealed that the lock on the front door was French, dating back to the 1700s. He had it restored by a specialist in Paarl. Various articles that appeared in the press over the years as the farm changed owners note that the original stinkwood doors and wardrobes in the main house remained intact. The front section of the house consists of a central living room with a bedroom on each side. The T-section included a dining area. While the front section had yellowwood beams and ceilings, the rafters in T-section were exposed. A lean-to section with a fireplace had been added in one of the elbows of the T using sundried bricks. It was being used as a kitchen. The house and barns had been constructed according to the usual technique used by Dutch settlers in the Cape, with walls of poured mud or clay, cast layer by layer about 700mm wide. “This method of construction – ubiquitously used by Dutch settlers, trekboers and later Voortrekkers – requires a source of clayey ground into which is added ‘a good proportion’ of sand and grit, possibly straw or dung, combined in a pit, all trod through by oxen-hooves in span,” writes Fisher (quoting William John Burchell’s Travels In The Interior Of Southern Africa). He describes the technique in detail: This mud must be 'well-tempered, sufficiently stiffened to be able to stand alone up to 300mm in height without slump. This was prepared at the same time as the foundations were being laid, and would leaven for about seven days, deemed ready when a ball made from it, when thrown to the ground, retained its shape. The cob was delivered to the builder on pitchforks, who then piled it in courses of about 300mm, all built over a good stone or slate foundation. Each layer was allowed to set and then paired to an even surface with a flat paddle, much as that used as a pizza oven shovel. The corners were laced through diagonally by saplings or braided cord at each layer to prevent the separating and bursting of the mud structure at this weakest point where the direction of the stresses of thrust changed. These stresses were consequent to the additional weight of the gable on the end wall, thereby creating shear while on the other was the thrust of the weight of the thatched roof. Once the walls were complete, they would have been finished with lime and sand plaster. Over the years this had been replaced with cement. Booyens notes that one of the biggest tasks of the restoration involved removing the cement plaster and re-finishing the walls with traditional lime plaster, which recaptured the undulating surface of Cape homes known to soften the bright karoo light. Where there was termite damage, the walls were filled in again with clay. In some areas, when the cement plaster was stripped away, poplar-branch lintels were revealed, in many cases in pairs, which had been placed where doors were planned during construction. Fisher explains that this was done “to act as tension and compression members in the homogenised mud”. Booyens explains further that the doors would have been cut out below these “primary lintels”, probably after drilling a hole through the wall and using a cutting wire “like an igloo”. A finishing lintel would then have been added and the edges built up using sun-dried bricks manufactured on site. Fisher notes that “a flat-arched opening at the eastern end was revealed, possibly indicating that that was the hearth, possibly with a kommyntjie or additional alcove cooking place with external chimney”. He adds that pine door frames “in all likelihood pre-manufactured” would have been imported. He also notes that sundried green bricks would have been “used for all the finer work as well as the gables, embedded in dagha (clay mortar)”. Truen and Booyens opted to use a thin lime plaster on the interior walls between the central living room and the bedrooms on either side, not only expressing the original texture of the mud wall, but also, as Truen puts it, leaving “a little of that construction history visible, so you can get a bit of a story of how these building were put together”. In the living space, the original yellowwood beams and ceiling were intact and could be restored. The timber floors, however, had rotted and were replaced with poplar planks, consistent with the originals, kiln dried in Oudtshoorn. The screed floors of the T-section, which was converted into a combined kitchen and dining area, bathroom and front stoep were all refinished using “stone pavers taken out of the veld”, as was the kitchen courtyard and front stoep. The roof of the lean-to section had rotted away, and a raw concrete slab was cast over it. It was converted into two bathrooms. Narrow slats for skylights flood the bathrooms and passage with natural light. A custom-made poplar vanity and shutters were added for privacy. In fact, poplar shutters were made for all the windows, which enhances the remarkable thermal qualities of the building. “Even on a very hot day, when temperatures can rise into the upper 30s and early 40s, the internal temperature is in the mid to low 20s and is very pleasant,” says Truen. “All the extant door and window furniture and fittings have been refurbished and retained or re-instated,” adds Fisher. Beneath the corrugated iron of the roof, the beams, rafters, and ropes used to tether the thatch, and even tufts of the thatching, remained. Fisher notes that “it was decided to reuse these and re-thatch the house, both for aesthetic and climatic comfort”. The thatch roof was reinstated by JNA Thatching, a company that, says Truen, has “historically done a lot of thatching in the Cape and knows these kinds of buildings very well”. Where modern materials were introduced, they were carefully selected. The shower (in the recess originally used for a fireplace), for example, has been clad in terrazzo slabs, and in the kitchen, a contemporary island has been inserted, also clad in terrazzo. “We looked for a contemporary material that spoke to the original materials,” says Truen. The concrete and aggregate in Terrazzo resonate with the stone and cement paving. “The terrazzo felt like a way to work between the old and the new, where the new felt like it had some kind of genesis in the old,” says Truen. The kitchen block also makes it possible to keep the kitchen and dining areas integrated, making it a central social space, while a 200mm raised barrier above the counter ensures that the food preparation area is unobtrusive. Appliances are stored below the counter. “There are no contemporary appliances sitting at higher levels other than this extractor fan,” says Truen. One of the only contemporary interventions was the addition of a double-sided fireplace between the kitchen and lounge area. Recessed lights were used on the exterior walls to keep the walls unmolested by modern technology. Where lanterns were added, on either side of the front door, for example, and elsewhere on the main house, as well as on the wine store, they were custom made. Their design took cues from lanterns the legendary Cape modernist architect and restoration maestro Gawie FAGAN designed for a wine cellar at Groot Constantia, one of Cape Town’s most famous historical wine farms. Fagan played a pivotal role in “figuring out a way to interpret Cape detailing and reference it in his modernist work”, explains Truen. The landscaping of the sloped site was another significant undertaking, involving a contemporary approach to terracing at various heights, executed using traditional Cape building elements and materials. “We created a raised platform at the back of the building, so you can now come down a driveway and park at the back of the building and walk down the site towards the house and the wine store,” says Truen. On the upper level, a stone swimming pool has been added, filled with water from a borehole, which runs down a channel and ultimately to the dam. The pool, level with the paving, appears almost as a continuation of the paving itself. “It’s really just a place for the water to pause on its way to the irrigation system,” says Truen. The more heavily trafficked areas are paved with stone from the surrounding veld, while the rest is surfaced with peach pips to create a neat uniform surface that in time will weather to the same colour as the thatch. These terraces are planted with olive trees, and vygies and other natural vegetation has also re-established itself. Fruit trees and beehives have also been introduced. The Wine Store The outbuilding that is referred to as the wynkelder in reference to a time when grapes were grown on the farm. It is a small flat-roofed structure that has restored and converted into a living unit. It was severely damaged and had been clumsily altered. An incongruous timber pergola and a brick fireplace had been added to the exterior. The fireplace, however, had delaminated from the wall and was collapsing. The walls were also severely damaged by termites and the floors and ceiling rotted. When repairs began, it was discovered that the wine store had originally been a single-level building, and its parapet was raised in the 1970s to allow for another level so that it could be used as a house. “When we repaired the plaster, we could see that the bottom part of the building was made out of poured mud, and then as you go up, there are some sundried bricks, and then more contemporary bricks right at the top,” says Truen. A somewhat clunky staircase has also been added. The repairs and restoration of the wine store involved reorganising the ground level so that it could function as a living area and kitchen and locating the bedroom and bathroom on the mezzanine above. The ground floor was levelled and paved in stone harvested from the surrounding veld. The rotted upper floor was replaced with SA pine, which was limewashed. The roof upstairs was finished with poplar beams and a rietdak ceiling. Booyens designed a new self-supporting steel staircase as a contrasting contemporary insertion. “The staircase doesn’t touch the original structure of the building,” he says. It floats above the floor and is set slightly apart from the walls, connecting at a single point on the floor and at just one point on the mezzanine level. Its contemporary unichannel frame and intricately detailed American Oak treads, suspended by a system of cables, make for a subtle intervention. The modern decorative timber screen is similarly light, but clearly expressed as a contemporary addition, respecting the historical fabric of the building through contrast and a lightness of touch. The two stone treads at the base of the staircase are also offset from the walls and the staircase, so that they and the staircase appear as “two loose elements inside the original building” as Booyens puts it. The mezzanine level has a long, narrow en suite bathroom running the length of the front wall, which also contrasts with the historical fabric. It is accessed via a large cut-out between the bedroom and bathroom to facilitate the views to the orchard beyond. “And of course, take advantage of the breeze and the natural light,” adds Truen. A curtain provides privacy when necessary. The bathroom combines contemporary materials such as terrazzo cladding and a laser-cut metal ceiling with a long poplar table that runs the length of the wall in front of the windows, and poplar shutters. The contemporary materials are natural and honestly expressed, as Truen puts it, “nesting in quite nicely”, and engaging with the building’s heritage by expressing time as a continuum acknowledging the contemporary moment. The exterior of the wine store has been painted pink partly in reference to the historical practice in the karoo of mixing lime to make a light red or pink colour, and partly in an exploration of some of the historical connections between Cape and Mexican architecture. This avenue of architectural dialogue was prompted by a number of trips Truen had made to Mexico because of international commissions there. He visited various traditional Mexican buildings, as well as some famous examples of Mexican modernist architecture such as Luis Barragan’s famous Cuadra san Cristobal. “A lot of the historical buildings in both countries are made in quite similar ways, using mud and stone and materials that were immediately available to them,” he says. “And, actually, they have quite similar landscapes.” He was also interested by what he perceived as similarities between Cape and Mexican modernism. The work of the Cape and of Mexican modernists were both rooted in their respective vernacular architectures and fused local materials and construction techniques with modernist approaches to forge a rich, sensual regionalist approach to modernist principles. Both Mexican and Cape modernism were particularly sensitive to the climate and quality of light, which lent itself to the use of bright colours. Cuadra san Cristobal was painted shades of pink. Truen also draws a connection between the shutter door of the main house and Barragan’s modernist redeployment of similar doors and window shutters to moderate heat, light, and privacy. This dialogue between Cape and Mexican architecture is also evident in parts of the landscaping throughout the rest of the restoration project. The pool above the main house and the water channel that runs to the dam, for example, also take cues from Barragan’s use of water features. The Pump House The Pump House is a new building constructed in response to the need for an irrigation building. “It was an opportunity to experiment and test some ideas we had to do with contemporary architecture built using traditional techniques,” says Truen. The building forms a connection between the landscape and the dam wall. Its earth-coloured walls take their cue from the poured-mud walls of the heritage buildings. “It’s a technique somewhere between rammed earth and working with concrete,” explains Booyens. “You could almost say it’s a primitive form of working with concrete, but instead of concrete, we worked with mud.” The walls are more than a metre thick, and have been left unpainted, expressing their materiality, and blending with the landscape. The vaulted brick roof was an experiment in construction devised to simplify the expensive and highly skilled labour usually required to construct vaults. It involved creating a system of steel beams and a plywood template, and building the vault one row at a time, which proved both cost efficient and appropriate for the skills available locally. “When we took the shutter out, it stood up, because it was a real catenary arch,” says Booyens. The rest of the roof is planted, and steel waterspouts cantilever far out from the walls so that water draining from the roof does not fall against the wall, a technique adapted from vernacular West African adobe architecture [See butabu]. “For me it was a really interesting experience to go and find materials on site, and then build something that is so fundamentally in tune with the climate and performs so much better than any contemporary building,” says Truen. “There are definitely lessons there.” (Newshub). The restoration features on the following websites:Domus Awards Presentation Domus Awards Teaser Domus Awards Brochure Media24 Leading Architecture Good Thing Guy Netwerk24 Stir Cape World Groot Ontbyt Lifestyling designboom _________________________ 2021 Award Citation CIfA Award for Architecture 2021: Buffelsdrift Buffelsdrift farm in the Klein Karoo is an adaptive reuse heritage project. The site housed several Cape Dutch buildings that were built on the farm during the mid 1800s with the main house dating back to 1852. In 2017 the architects were faced with a dilapidated and neglected site and chose to approach it with love. Evidence from earlier refurbishments of the 1970s were removed. The plaster was stripped out to reveal the original palimpsest of structures and the construction technique. These traditional construction techniques such as the use of poured earth were recognised and adopted by the architects. The project acts as a dialogue between historic Cape vernacular techniques, indigenous construction, and contemporary urgencies around sustainability in the built environment. The project is very much about landscape. The most significant external works are in the subtle but effective terraced platforms that set the existing buildings into the landscape. This is a project of infrastructure, of a water system and of the rehabilitation of the farm into a productive olive orchard. The use of traditional techniques with a contemporary reading and heritage reinterpretation transforms and enhances the original structures into a seamless new narrative between vernacular architecture and contemporary design, and into its new adapted use as a place of leisure and retreat. The quality of the interior and exterior space is so compelling that at the site visit the jury panel were reluctant to leave. Books and articles that reference Buffelsdrift
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