House and Garden magazine – June 2017

Interiors 

 

TEXT BY PIET SMEDY

 

House and Garden magazine – June 2017

 

Beautiful homes, inspirational gardens, compelling stories 

 

The bigger picture

 

Architectural detail, scale and a luxurious American aesthetic lends gravitas to a family home in the Winelands

 

There’s a sense of serenity which comes from order,’ says designer John Jacob.

 

‘Everything about this house consistently follows a very rational approach to proportion.’

 

The house in question, set on Val de Vie Estate just outside Cape Town, is a spectacular expression of grand design and nuanced finishes. The homeowner, an avid polo player, wanted a design that both reflected his passion but at the same time would allow for his young family to live comfortably. To this end, John drew on a wide range of influences, from 18th-century Georgian architectural blueprints to the modern works of luminaries such as Ken Tate.

 

‘I’d call it a very American-inspired approach to a family estate,’ says John, encapsulating the project.

 

‘We’ve taken these things and expressed them as something new. You’ve got to be pretty fearless in your approach otherwise you’re in serious danger of turning something unique into nothing more than pastiche.’

 

Grandeur is certainly something that this house delivers in spades; step across the threshold and you’ll find yourself in a cavernous entrance hall with dramatic vertical elements set in contrast to subtle silk wallpaper.

 

‘The space lends itself to a sense of majesty, so we really emphasised that with architectural elements rather than attempt to decorate the curving walls,’ says John.

 

‘In this instance, it’s the mouldings and the structural embellishments that do all the talking.

 

‘Leading off to the entrance hall are the communal living areas, a study and a wine cellar, which the homeowner wanted expressed as something rich and intense yet quietly intimate.’

 

To create softness in such generously sized rooms would require all the furniture pieces to be custom designed and over-scaled, an extension of John’s golden-ratio design philosophy.

 

‘A piece of furniture has no meaning until you contextualise it within the room,’ he explains. The pieces are there to mimic the proportions of the room. At the end of the day, this consistency – in terms of both the architecture and the interior rendering – and a focus on scaling is how you create a space that has meaning.

 

‘This approach can also be seen in the kitchen, where even though the decorating favours a lighter and more airy aesthetic, pieces were still conceived on a grand scale (the central table is almost two metres wide. Materiality and texture were also integral to the creation of gravitas in the living areas. John opted to use what he terms ‘noble material’ – silk, linen, marble and timber-throughout.

 

‘This is a house that will grow and, thanks to its proportion and use of materials, it will wear the patina of age well,’ he says. ‘In this way, the home is a perfect balance of contemporary and classic. It doesn’t conform to ephemeral trends and fads, which invariably make a space feel undignified and the decorating thin.’

 

John’s was a deeply mathematical approach to design, one that he sees more as a ‘language’ than a simple stylistic approach.

 

‘There is a language in everything that is expressed, from the linearity of the architecture to the intensity of colour, and if you approach these languages with rationality you create interiors that move you, that resonate with our innate understanding of aesthetics.

 

‘In practical terms, this means that everything in the house is part of a larger context – from window and door heights (the latter sit at three metres) to the length of the couches and countertops – every part is a cog in the grand dynamo that drives this home.

 

‘We always work within those classic rules. And in a way, you see very clearly in this house, even though the choice of furniture and paint make the rooms read quite differently,’ says John, pointing again towards the home’s adamant expression of vertical planes.

 

‘It’s this that gives the home its dignity and its weight.’

John Jacob Interiors  johnjacobinteriors.com

 

Read more John Jacob Interiors Magazine features here…