PROJECT EIGHT: BEAU CONSTANCE (3)

SOMETHING NEW AND INSPIRING 

http://www.beauconstancespa.co.za/

PROJECT EIGHT: BEAU CONSTANCE (2)

                       Award of Excellence Citation

The building programme called for a main house, meditation pavilion and guest cottage. The location is a new wine farm on a site of spectacular natural beauty. The design response achieves architecture of exquisite subtlety with minimum intervention on the pristine site, characterised by a minimalist design vocabulary.

                                  Architect's Motivation

The site has been cleared of alien vegetation and an extensive infrastructure program including new roads, a stormwater management system water and electrical reticulation, has been carried out.

Due to its topography, it has very limited visibility from surrounding roads and properties and only becomes visible from the Constantia Valley, some kilometres away. It incorporates both fertile rolling vineyards and rugged and rocky mountainside.

The steep slopes of the site fold around a kloof of sorts, with easterly and northerly orientation, and extend almost to the apex of the Vlakkenberg.

PROJECT EIGHT: BEAU CONSTANCE

BEAU CONSTANCE

Beau Constance

Constantia Nek, Cape Town, Western Cape.

Architect

METROPOLIS DESIGN

"Beau Constance is a captivating union of architecture and nature. The building programme called for a main house, meditation pavilion and guest cottage. The location is a new wine farm on a site of spectacular natural beauty. 

The primary building components of wall, floor slab and roof, are reduced to planar elements throughout, composed to create a sculptural interplay between mass and void. This lightness of touch is immediately evident when approaching the main house. The private accommodation it contains appears as a simple volume poised above a loose landscape of ground planes which define the principal living area.

At Beau Constance, space and scale have been masterfully manipulated. Its inhabitants are provided with a spatial experience which is richly layered, and perfectly in tune with its natural environment. The project is one of conceptual rigor and architectural clarity - from the planning through to the resolution of detail."