Cocoon House

– Illovo, Johannesburg –

A house on a tennis court subdivision for a fabulous 50-something woman living alone. Silent dictate of security. A courtyard house where all rooms are in contact with each other around an egg-shaped atrium – a house in touch, always, with itself.

This world is intimate, fish-bowled, bent to one’s own – the cocoon makes an interior geography, a world in which you own the sun, the moon and the stars. Strange symmetries appear. Doors slide away into cavities a la Michael Sutton; proportions are square-ish, sometimes. Texture oscillates from rough to smooth. Colour lives within. From outside, the house presents silent cubic shapes. On account of its open heart, the building almost appears empty, a frame to nothing. Sunlight glows from within.

Residential Projects

Container House / Cuilidh / Verandah House / Dunkeld House / Sea House / Little Cliff House / Cocoon House / Fynbos House / Anti-estate House / First House / Watershed / Hyde Park House / Dual Vision House / House / Nostalgia / Melville Vaults / Bara House / Folding Lofts / Vredehoek Lofts / Somerset House School / Loop House / Floodline House / Dune House / Cintsa House / Bantry Bay House