Top Billing features a spectacular green home by architect Nadine Engelbrecht
To combat global warming, melting ice shelves and rising ocean levels - architect Nadine Engelbrecht is doing everything she can to build the greenest houses possible.
When Nadine’s parents Andre and Charmaine Freyer commissioned her to create their new home, the request was that it should be ‘nothing that looks like a house’. The brief was surprisingly broad for a couple who are both precise quantity surveyors but it soon crystalized, once they found their ideal site.
The retaining wall uses attractive, local stone from the site and Charmaine and her daughter went for weathered timber and coir to keep with the discovered, natural feel of the outdoors. Inside, there’s a subtle transition from the conservatory to the areas leading off it. Standing six metres high, the mostly glass and steel centre-piece sets the tone for the rest of the home.
With no curtains or blinds - the inside and outside are effectively one and the same. With so much of the artwork in this house being sculptural and structural, the one landscape they have is the real one they’re surrounded by and to shape the immediate surrounds, Nadine turned to Nandi Koster.
Between her parents’ feel for wood, wine, food and design, they’ve raised a daughter with a rich, broad appreciation for life.
With only the barest layer of steel and glass separating them from their environment, the Freyers embrace the idea that ultimately it’s planet Earth which is our home - and we need to look after her.
