House Flanagan | I M A G I N E A R C H I T E C T U R E

House Flanagan is a 4-bedroom, 3 bathroom luxury residential house located in Upper Holley Avenue on the east face of Table Mountain in Cape Town. The Client was a private Medical Entrepreneur with a noticeable taste for style and design with high specification intentions. The existing site was actually a green zoned site within an Estate that was eventually passed as a GR4 site which allowed for residential building. The site which is positioned high up the eastern face of Table Mountain faces a priceless view over the eastern edge of the western Cape with stunning views of Muizenberg. Its location on the eastern edge became the driving design for the house build losing sun regularly by or just after lunch time. Warmth and light becoming a main priority for the driving design. As a result, the concept design was a long and wide skylight to allow the maximising of light and warmth into the house which generates enough heat into the home that would radiate out into the rest of the house after the loss of sun in mid-afternoon and evening periods. The extraverted nature of the design is in keeping with the dialog of the houses architectural language with the views.

House Flanagan is certainly no ordinary house. Located in a mini forest known as Fernwood forest in Fernwood Estate, the building sits at the foot of Table Mountain’s eastern edge. Given the houses immediate forest surrounding, the house demonstrates an enthusiasm to experience its spaces outside the house with a completely surrounding balcony to breathe in the forest air and be completely engulfed it’s users with a lengthy Muizenberg horizon. If not attempting to encourage its inhabitants to spend more space outside, the design instigates a priority in acknowledging its surroundings internally with the use of well placed glass around the house. Doing so by the use of tall sliding aluminium glass windows and doors and an unprecedented skylight in the Estate spanning 10m across the main spaces to the house.

Its spaces include 4x bedrooms, 2x communal bathrooms, master bedroom with ensuite and walk-through cupboard, study, upstairs and downstairs lounges, an outside balcony lounge, kitchen, walk-in scullery, dining room, guest toilet, double garage and staff quarters with ensuite. A martini-seat pool, and surrounding timber decking to both the morning seating eastern area and summer sun facing northern area.

The houses architectural design from the outside shows a very strong dialog with its views out to the east towards Muizenberg mountains. Entering and circulating the house is purposefully interrupted by its 10m long by 2m wide skylight to capture the attention of the view of Table Mountain behind the house. Whilst the skylight provides exceptional views around its context, its primary purpose was to create a very ‘green conscious’ design and is intended to accept light and warmth through the winter months and early parts of the day, warming the house and radiating out during the latter hours of the day where the heat of the sun is lost. Warming the house for afternoon book reading in a quiet lower level lounge, and providing splashes of light down into the house creating an awareness of the passing time of day and awarding a psychological pleasantry to all the houses’ spaces.  A sweeping floating staircase joins the two floors directly underneath the breath-taking skylight above. Its upstairs lounge, which faces the Muizenberg horizon, sports a 7.5m wide and 2.5m high sliding glass door opening which opens up completely and disappears into side pocket spaces, creating a blurred boundary between the inside and outside the house. This opening then creates a ‘real-time oil painting’ of the Muizenberg mountain silhouette on the views horizon. A purposefully intended technique created by the Architect to experience once sitting in the upstairs lounge. Both lounges on both floors are flanked by stainless steel fronted designer gas fireplaces, keeping the house warm through the more chilled months of the year. The master bedroom with ensuite has a double shower which incorporates the houses main ‘wow-factor’ element with a back-lit onino-bianco marble wall, sourced from Italy, to the entire length of the shower space, whilst looking through an adjacent window into the nearby forest and over the Victoria & Albert supplied bath tub. All the spaces to the house are completely underfloor heated beneath polished palamino marble and locally produced ‘green-conscious’ recycled bamboo floors, enhancing, reminding and rewarding its natural context. The constant reminder of its user being positioned within a forest is the external timber cladding around the house and some of the internal spaces provided with marine-ply ceilings. A pool with a built in martini-seat is positioned on the main sun-facing northern edge of the site and fronts the 2 lower level bedrooms with a timber decking surround for summer month tanning. A staff quarters is also included in the houses spaces and is independently accessed by the house, maintaining the level of privacy. Good security is provided by a tall design conscious boundary wall enclosure that continues the timber cladding around the house with an automated timber gate and separate pedestrian access to the house with automated access control. The entire space being completely complimented by a Landscape Architect designed garden that compliments its context again and creating a visual aesthetic that is nothing short of harmonious and calming when seen from the inside.