Castle Rock Beach House

The house is located alongside one of the most beautiful stretches of beach in South Africa. The site is 220 square meters in area – coverage is 50% with an allowable footprint of 110 square meters. This is a small house with a big program and the challenge was to meet the owners’ needs within the allowable envelope.

The house steps down to the beach on three levels – an arrival/entrance level, a kitchen, eating and living level open to the beach and a bedroom level which is hung above the living space and accessed from the entrance level. These spaces are held by two solid flanking parallel walls – there are no openings in these walls. A glass sliding roof opens up to the sun and the mountain behind. When the South-Easter blows the family can retreat to the house, close up the external openings and open the house to the sun and sky through the glass sliding horizontal roof.

The exterior of the house comprises a combination of very rough plaster made up of a mixture of white cement and crushed recycled glass pellets and poured in place white concrete. The interior of the house is very different – the sensibility of the inside is in sharp contrast to the exterior and is a space of retreat from the beach. Externally all corners are rounded to soften the impact of the house in the fynbos landscape.