Worlds Apart

TEXT BY PIET SMEDY

House & Garden – Feb 2018

With Robben Island to its front and Lion’s Head to its back, designer John Jacob strikes the perfect balance between epic views and considered decorating in a Cape Town home.

 No two houses share the same story. For some, it’s an intimate tale spoken in soft velvets and dark jewel tones, for others it’s a manifesto on man’s architectural triumphs. In the case of this home, wedged between a lush mountain forest and the impossibly wide Atlantic, it’s the story of two worlds coming together. It’s unusual, even for Cape Town, to have these epic views over both land and sea,’ says interior designer John Jacob, who made it his mission to create an interior that capitalised on its unique location while achieving a classic-in-proportion, modern-in-execution space.

The house’s layout cleanly divides living areas, with the garages and cellar on ground floor, lounge, living room and kitchen on an entirely open-plan first; and the private sleeping quarters on the second.

For John, the starting point was to open up the house’s kitchen completely with large windows that slide away to reveal a retaining wall planted with greenery and star jasmine (‘You get the scent throughout the house’) and further out, the forest. ‘Planting this barrier of leafy greenery created a much softer feel, giving you a respite from the ocean view,’ says John. ‘In a way, the gentle, earthy yin of the forest becomes the perfect counterbalance to the light, bright yang of the blue sea.’

With this change effected, the entire first floor now opens up on both sides, providing complete and uninterrupted views. Faced with a decidedly modern exterior, John opted to extend this into the interiors by focusing on extensive use of horizontal lines and clean proportions. ‘I always try to use an interior language that marries with the building itself;’ he explains. ‘There needs to be a sense of synergy between the two. That’s how you create harmony.’ Drawing on the homeowners’ Norwegian nationality as a source of inspiration (‘Theirs is quite a classic approach to living’) John used a tightly edited range of natural materials throughout the interior.

The floor is waxed Spanish limestone, it’s edges subtly foil to the very refined space. All the joinery in the house was heavily sandblasted to reveal the grain whereas the doors were forged by blacksmith to properly showcase the gritty realness of the steel medium. The same approach can be seen in the exclusive use of custom furniture pieces, where every swoop of sofa and massing of an armchair was carefully considered. ‘There’s something of a purist approach here in that all of these materials are noble and nothing is covered up; says John. ‘That was the entire point here; they all get to speak, to be what they are. Nothing is masked or decorated over’.

Similarly, John purposefully chose a restrained colour palette of biscuit and cream, dark wood and charcoal that would better showcase the home’s sweeping views. ‘The eye will always travel to the loudest visual element, ‘he explains. ‘So with that in mind a simpler set of hues was better to celebrate the house’s aspects.’

For John, the success-or-failure-of an interior is down to it’s language. ‘Just like a painting has a composition and an expression, so too does a roomscape,’ he says, pointing out how every element within a space, from the textures and materials to colour and art, needs to engage in the same dialogue. ‘When you develop that shared language between the exterior architecture and interior design you create something dynamic. In that way decorating becomes a form of art in itself.’ There is little doubt then that what John has achieved here is nothing short of a quiet masterpiece.

Read more John Jacob Interiors Magazine features here…