Outside In

When architect Nadine Engelbrecht built a home for her parents on a farm outside Pretoria in South Africa, not only did she bring the outside in with a double-volume conservatory at its centre, but she also took the house off the grid

- GRAHAM WOOD

It's not supposed to look like a barn, says architect Nadine Engelbrecht of the house she built for her parents in Zwavelpoort outside Pretoria. 'It's just supposed to be a shell.

The house, on a 35-hectare farm with rocky, hilly grasslands and wide-open views of the nearby Bronberg mountain range, might appear to be referencing barn-like structures or gesturing towards some sort of agricultural vernacular design, but that wasn't Nadine's primary concern.

When she first began sketching designs for her parents, Charmaine and Andre Freyer, she had no shortage of ideas - 'architectural ideas,' she laughs. She suggested screens perforated with images of the surrounding landscape and other aesthetic devices, but her parents weren't biting. After a few more attempts, she asked her mother to show her a picture of something she liked. Charmaine produced a picture of a farmhouse in the Karoo. 'It looked like nothing,' says Nadine: a stone cottage with a roof of corrugated iron sheeting. 'I asked her what she liked about it, says Nadine, 'And she said she didn't know. She also showed her a tearoom in a conservatory she liked.

Baffled, Nadine went back to the drawing board. And then the penny dropped. 'I realised my mom wanted simplicity,' she says. 'Nothing that's trying to look like architecture; just something that creates beautiful space and light.