An Architect’s South African Digs Borrow the Stripped-Down Look of Parking Garages
Gregory Katz’s concrete home and rubber-clad studio in Johannesburg ooze effortless cool.
Gregory Katz’s concrete home and rubber-clad studio in Johannesburg ooze effortless cool.
For architect Greg Katz, the design of several family homes in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs has served as a testing ground for his maturing practice. These projects demonstrate the innovative ways in which he tends to select and assemble the materials for his buildings. His own brand-new home represents the most recent example of this attitude.
A view from the entrance to Caryn’s ground-floor studio, looking back at the eastern facade of the home. We get a clear sense of how the concrete frame supports the building’s loads and the brickwork acts as an expressive infill material.
Photo by Greg Cox / Bureaux
At House Katz, on a balmy late-summer afternoon, Greg relayed an uncommon aesthetic preference: "I love the raw, pared-down visual quality of generic parking garages." There’s a wry irony in this statement, considering that he houses his family in a dwelling with "parking garage" ceilings, perfect for cars, but does not house his and his wife Caryn’s cars in the typically suburban garage.
The view from the open-plan lounge and dining zone back to the generous kitchen area. Natural light floods in through the extra-tall blue front door to the Katz home. Here one gets a sense of how effectively the dynamic floor patterning and concrete ceiling grid unite the different functional and living zones of the dwelling’s ground floor.
Photo by Greg Cox / Bureaux
Greg and Caryn’s home commands a self-assured yet unassuming presence. Its street-facing facade presents a restrained palette of materials, colors, and textures. Concrete gray and the soft, pinkish red of its expressive brickwork inform the home’s overall character. A Mediterranean blue announces the slender front door and a punchy yellow emphasizes carefully placed door and window openings. Greg’s affinity for concrete was honed over a decade ago in the family’s first purpose-built house. Three kids later, this home is softer and more nuanced than its predecessor. It’s a fine example of the versatility permitted by a concrete skeleton. The Katzes’ house sits comfortably in the lineage of structural concrete-frame potential that Le Corbusier stimulated over a century ago, with the 1914 launch of his famous Dom-Ino concrete frame.
The uninterrupted view from the kitchen to the open plan lounge, with plentiful natural light pouring in through the sliding doors linking the living spaces to the rolling lawns of the garden.
Photo by Greg Cox / Bureaux
See the full story on Dwell.com: An Architect’s South African Digs Borrow the Stripped-Down Look of Parking Garages
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