building. ‘The driving force of the design, though,
is its spatial, structural and formal complexity, and
our attempt to synthesise all these things in a design
characterised by its politeness.’ The last word is
carefully chosen. In the past year, anti-gentriication
protests have become more common in Bo-Kaap. After
nearly three centuries, the neighbourhood’s traditional
Muslim inhabitants are slowly being squeezed out as
developers move in. Both Fitzgerald and Stiekema
are aware of the current sensitivities.
Fitzgerald, a well-built man of 61 with a brush cut,
leads me from his open-plan kitchen, past a Sudanese
wood sculpture adorned with a beaded necklace from
Nigeria, onto his sun-kissed terrace that in summer
is shielded from the Cape’s vicious south-east winds.
He points to an enormous development higher up the
slope of Signal Hill. It is one of three large-scale
developments, Stiekema later tells me when we speak,
that have run roughshod over the community. ‘The
upheaval is very complex and speaks to an unheard
frustration,’ says Stiekema, who has been a Bo-Kaap
resident since 1991. His team worked closely with Cape
Town’s heritage department on the new building to
avoid any community issues. The only pushback
Fitzgerald has received since taking occupation was
a snarky comment by a local youth.
The podium design of the Skypad incorporates
of-street parking on the ground loor (a mandatory
planning requirement) as well as a small gallery
showcasing Fitzgerald’s holdings of traditional African
art. ‘I can say I am an expert now, but I wasn’t when
I started out two decades ago,’ Fitzgerald says of his
career trading wood sculpture from equatorial Africa.
‘You’d buy things you thought were real only to ind
out they weren’t.’ Stock-in-trade African artefacts are
stored in a modest storage area down a light of stairs.
‘I don’t keep things piled up in cupboards. I’m not
a hoarder,’ says Fitzgerald, whose tastes extend from
traditional African art to work by contemporary South
African artists, many associated with Cape Town’s
Blank and Stevenson galleries. ‘I don’t ever deliberately
buy something to sell. I will buy it if I like it, in the
knowledge that one day it will move on. You get
African art dealers who have thousands of pieces,
but I am quite minimalist in my approach to it all.’
Fitzgerald, who also consults, began collecting
contemporary art while living in London in the 1980s.
His go-to gallery was Joshua and Kitty Bowler’s Crucial
Gallery, an experimental space on Portobello Road that
championed raw work in metals and found materials.
The sleeper-wood bench and table in the dining area
is a reminder of this earlier phase in his collecting.
A notable feature of the voluminous living area is
the grated steel walkway overhead, which connects
the two en-suite bedrooms, with an additional section
leading to a swimming pool. It too recalls a younger
moment in Fitzgerald’s journey: ‘The oil rigs chased me
all the way here,’ he laughs. ‘This is what I’m used to.
They are uncomfortable to walk on, but tough.’ ∂
thecurator.co.za; teamarchitects.co.za‘I don’t deliberately buy something to sell. I will
buy it if I like it, knowing one day it will move on’
Left, midcentury glassware,
and a work by Cape Town
artist Conrad Botes, oil-based
paint on reversed glass
Below, the gallery space with
midcentury pieces, wooden
statues from equatorial Africa
and, on the wall, a work by
local artist Jan-Henri BooyensIn Residence
098 ∑