Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

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La Lucia House / SAOTA

LA Lucia is a dream transformer house. The view from the street is a closed in house with a veiled approach to it that is both secretive and introverted. A certain sagacity of arrival is created by a serious entrance between two milk-wood trees; the cinematic panorama is only revealed as one enters the double-volume hallway. To highlight that moment of connection, the architects clad the ceilin...

LAP Marina Residence / 5+1AA Alfonso Femia Gianluca Peluffo + Peia Associati

The main target regarding the LAP residential complex is not only to provide a luxury compound of modern villas with all the full residential services, allowing a sophisticate and environmental way to live in the growing town in a peaceful, tranquil and familiar way. The main issue that substantially stays back the idea of this plan is the reinterpretation of the African identity, reinventing t...

House Steyn / Thomas Gouws Architects

The house is situated on a golf course in a residential estate close to Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa. The brief called for a contemporary minimalist house that provided security and privacy, while exploiting the golf course views. The site is exposed to extremely windy conditions year-round and protected outdoor living areas were a necessity. A priced collection of antique Cape furnitu...

The Ecomo Home / Pietro Russo

The ecomo home is a compact home designed for modern, simple living in collaboration with nature. The design is based on basic sustainable, green design principles. The ecomo home offers a low-maintenance, modern, well-designed green housing alternative.

House in Camps Bay / Luis Mira Architects

The house is used as a holiday home by a single person, who often invites guest to stay. It needed to be a space that could be used as a controlled studio with the feeling of being open, as well as to be able to morph into private and individual spaces when the house is full of visitors.

House Gauché / Earthworld Architects and Interiors

The House is situated in one of Pretoria's oldest Golf Estates, which has already been extensively developed. Our client was particularly open-minded in buying one of the last open plots in the estate, an extremely rocky piece of ground not many would see opportunity in.

Nettleton 195 / SAOTA

Our client purchased the site, after we had completed an initial Design Concept for the previous property owner. Our client loved the design, and the visual direction the home was going, and accordingly shaped his brief around the design he saw.

Villa Amina / Pascal De Souza

Benin-based architect Pascal De Souza recently completed this beautiful eco-villa situated in Cape Coast, Ghana. The villa, a combination of a traditional technique of palm concrete, isolation in ceilings with grass and brickwork, explores the breezy coast with open facades and indoor outdoor spaces that connect the specific rooms of the house into one seamless spatially inclusive space.

Casa C / Ramos Castellano

Sao Vicente, Cape Verde archipelago, is a volcanic island, dry and arid, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where the elements of nature are extreme and dominant, technology and hand labor are basic and not very specialized, life is simple and flows slowly, following the cycles of nature. A foreign customer, adventurous and without budget constraints, decided to build a home that contains his...

Rehabilitation Of Four Caravansérail Of Fès Medina / Oualalou+Choi

The Medina of Fez constitutes an outstanding example of a medieval town created during the very first centuries of Islamisation of Morocco and presenting an original type of human settlement and traditional occupation of the land representative of Moroccan urban culture over a long historical period. The Medina of Fez bears a living witness to a nourishing city of the eastern Mediterranean havi...

Tree House / Van Der Merwe Miszewski Architects

Trees are precious in Africa. They provide shelter for the elders at meeting time, for school children in the midday heat, for all to shield against the unrelenting elements. In a sense the tree has become iconic, almost mythical.

Urban Patios / Pedro Sousa

The Angolan urban patios explore the home as a city and the city as a home. Architecture and a city are different manifestations of the same theme. The city isn’t simply the reunion of buildings or houses; it is a big and complex building.

Tree House / Malan Vorster Architecture Interior Design

Malan Vorster have been involved with previous projects on this tree-rich property, and were commissioned to design a small contemporary house to complement the existing collection of buildings - spatially organised around a modern interpretation of the Cape Werf.

Datum Antique: Houari Boumedienne Agricultural Village By Ricardo Bofil Taller Architects

The experience that RBTA has gained in the construction of housing developments was called on by the Algerian government, through the agency of France, to be applied to the construction of new centres of population in semi-desert areas where agriculture was to be promoted.

OVD 525 / Three14 Architects

OVD525 is a private home located in Bantry Bay, Cape Town. The steep mountainside site boasts un-disturbed views over Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard and Robben Island to the north and north-east. The city is seen in the distance towards the east and the iconic Lion’s Head Mountain towers over the house from the south. Western views take advantage of spectacular ocean-sunsets.

Emergency Medical Housing Compound / Studio Tam Associati

Looking at the amount of discarded containers laying around the building site of the Salam Centre we had this simple idea: to use them again in order to realize the required international staff housing compound.

House 02 Hyde Park / Daffonchio & Associates Architects

The house is set on a secluded, tranquil stand surrounded by established trees. The main house consists of 2 wings: the living wing and the bedroom wing. Both wings have long, low roofs which appear to float over and past them. These roofs are supported on external steel posts, as all of the walls stop short of the ceiling, with clerestory windows on top of all internal and external walls. The ...

House 01 Hyde Park / Daffonchio & Associates Architects

This house has been designed to be highly flexible and adapt to the owners' changing needs. The house has two skins throughout: the sliding glass windows and doors, and the sliding timber shutters, which enable the owners to constantly transform the look and feel of the spaces to suit their activities, the weather and the time.

Victoria 73 House / SAOTA

The property had an existing house, which completely under-utilized the site’s fantastic characteristics. The brief called for a dynamic response to capitalise on the site, creating an environment where the young family could enjoy an outdoor lifestyle offered by the site. This outdoor area is protected from the prevailing winds, and enjoys views of the sea, and more immediate views of large bo...