he sloping suburbs huging Cape Town’s historic centre
are home to a mosaic of architectural styles, but rare
is the building that deies common typologies. Cape
Dutch, Victorian and art deco homes still predominate
in tony neighbourhoods such as Oranjezicht and
Tamboerskloof, while the luxe new villas in Higovale
are really updated interpretations of Palm Springs
modernism. Even Bo-Kaap, where art collector
Michael Fitzgerald recently built his extrovert cubist
living space, is a museum to long-ago styles.
Once known as the Malay Quarter, in reference
to Muslim inhabitants often descended from slaves,
Bo-Kaap is best known for its spicy cuisine and
brightly coloured Cape Dutch and Georgian terrace
homes. ‘Being a Scotsman I always wanted to live in
a castle,’ says Fitzgerald of the rectilinear structure
he opted to build on a vacant plot on the ritzier edge
of this historically working-class neighbourhood.
Fitzgerald, who was born in Trinidad and followed
in his father’s footsteps as an oilman before seguing
into modelling, and later art dealing, drew inspiration
from Tadao Ando’s early domestic architecture when
composing his brief. His favourite Ando building is
Azuma House (1976), a windowless house in Osaka.
Assiduously quarantined from its neighbours by high
concrete walls, the house has an exposed courtyardconnecting two living areas. ‘You always risk getting
cold or wet,’ says Fitzgerald. ‘It is absolutely fabulous.’
Cape Town’s verticality is an antidote to Osaka’s
loodplain latness. The views of the surrounding
mountains from the upper two loors of Fitzgerald’s
mixed-use building also clarify the home’s nickname,
‘Skypad’. Local irm Team Architects, whose studio is
now located on the irst and second loors, supervised
the design. This is their third project for Fitzgerald.
Although a new build on a vacant plot, the Bo-Kaap
property had its challenges. The site is bounded on
three sides by existing heritage buildings. ‘One of
the key things for us was to create simple proportions
on the street façade,’ says Team Architects’ Philip
Stiekema. The cuboid form with extruded elements
rising over the congested Buitengracht Street may
look at odds with the adjacent mix of shabby residences
and industrial buildings, but its structure is rooted
in the architectural lines of the neighbourhood’s older
homes, says the architect.
While Ando is Fitzgerald’s chief reference point,
Stiekema also drew inspiration from the inventive
materiality and sculptural qualities of Italian architect
Carlo Scarpa’s work. ‘We tried to avoid the highway
grey of agregate concrete by pushing the colour mix,’says Stiekema of the oxidised tone of the new (^) »
Above, Fitzgerald’s study,
which looks across the city
to Table Mountain. On the
left wall is a work by his
favourite Cape Town artist,
Jacob van Schalkwyk. On the
bookshelf is a display of
‘Drunken Bricklayers’ glass
vases by Geoffrey Baxter,
as well as ten wooden
‘companion’ pieces sourced
from Congo, Gabon and the
Ivory Coast. His work desk is a
1961 piece by Nanna Ditzel
T
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