Heritage Cases

The submission details some small proposed changes to an existing series of heritage permits that pertain to additions and alterations to a 2B graded residential house at Erf 1024, 1 Signal Street, Schotsche Kloof Cape Town. The situation surrounding this application is reasonably complex as we are the third appointed architects handling the job since its inception more than five years ago. At this point there are two different heritage permits for portions of work on the house, namely a roof patio above the master bedroom and a first floor extension above the garage building. Both of which we would like to change slightly at the request of the client, at the suggestion of the appointed engineer, and because we believe certain aspects of the approved additions are inappropriate to the architecture of the existing house, and to the architecture of the area as a whole. The original draughtsman’s proposal included an external timber stair that led to a roof patio above the existing master bedroom. This submission went through due process and gained a heritage permit but was never submitted to council. We would like to revise this proposal, in as much as we believe the addition should not be as tall and should be constituted from wall architecture rather than a timber balustrade. Jacobs Parker’s later proposal also gained a heritage permit and has approval through BDM and LUMS. This proposal included the addition of a home office and bathroom, accessed by a new steel spiral stair with a solid steel balustrade, to be situated above the existing garage. The client is keen to begin construction on this approved portion as soon as possible but would also like some changes made. We would like to abandon the sculptural plate-steel spiral stair as we feel it is too extroverted and formally alien in what is otherwise a complex of basic masonry buildings. The client is also unhappy with the fact that the spiral stair consumes a large portion of the house’s internal court, and in doing so, makes this important outside space unusable. We propose lowering the height of the roof patio so that the existing roof parapet of the master bedroom building can be used as a balustrade. This would allow for the building to retain its current proportions and would minimise the visual impact of the roof patio, ie. no timer balustrades etc. The roof patio is proposed as timber decking over a concrete roof slab. As advised by Adelaide Combrink, we attempted to detail the patio area as a timber structure over with a timber and steel sheet roof. We are aware that this is preferred in the area as it can be more easily reversed. However, this solution is not suitable as the thickness of the timber roof and the fall required for steel roof sheeting compromises the head height of the bedroom to well below 2.4m. We also propose that the spiral stair be replaced by a light steel bridge spanning between the bedroom addition and the roof patio. We propose this structure is detailed to be as lightweight as possible and almost invisible when viewing the Bo-Kaap roofscape from a distance. This bridge would also allow the courtyard underneath to be left unaltered. Furthermore, we propose that the cantilevered window box off of the home office addition should be grounded with a small piece of wall in order to mediate/soften the modernist act of cantilevering a glass box off of the side of the building. This was also advised by the engineer for structural/cost reasons and asked for by the client as it would create a small covered space outside of the “front door” of the first floor addition. We believe that these proposed changes to the previous heritage submissions will allow an addition to be built which recedes to the background and allows the existing character of the building to be retained.