House Campbell

Michael Lumby Architecture

Seemingly taking its cue from a standard Vredehoek home footprint, the architect carves out a remarkable celebration of form, space and a play of light.
From the outside every beautifully crafted steel opening introduces a new form or a change in the configuration or coursing of the dominant brick facades. These facades provide to either offset the planting in the boxes generated by the formal interplay, or to eventually allow a total overgrow of the entire structure.
Internally every space is carved out of this solid brick form with a remarkable balance between economy of space and comfort. Moving through the house it is difficult sometimes to understand how, within such confined parameters, opportunities for space and volume could be found, how each opening to the outside could so perfectly capture particular views and aspects and yet respond so perfectly to the form making from the outside. And then, how the use of natural light can have so many meanings in so little space.
It may be easy to write a thousand words about the architecture of this house (and it is just a house), but it is true to say that every human being deserves waking in the delight of space and light and to end the day in the comfort of this cocoon.