Marco Zanuso Press House, Lydenburg, South Africa

In the 1970s the Milanese architect designed a house in South Africa. Recently rediscovered, it is still relevant with its sensitive yet radical approach. The design takes to an extreme Zanuso’s research into an idea of the home fixed thirty years ago in the pages of Domus and still valid

- Andrea Zamboni

The image was fixed in August 1942, in Marco Zanuso’s first text in response to the appeal launched by Domus entitled La casa e l’ideale (The house and the ideal). The principle was to have “a nucleus, like a cell, that can grow with the family; that can follow it as it develops. Life unfolds in large, bright spaces; in delimited, snug spaces. You sense the continuity throughout: in the vertical and the horizontal planes. The rooms are not limited environments but spaces that continue without interruption through a succession of different dimensions. The house is built on a single floor. The vertical structure, consisting of stone walls, anchors the roof, which is built as a bridge.”

Opportunity presented itself in 1969. The South African magnate Sydney Arnold Press (1919-1994) decided to establish with his wife Victoria, a model farm in Lydenburg – in the then Transvaal, today’s Gauteng – and wanted to build the main house in the heart of the huge Coromandel estate that he had recently bought. The couple, who loved outdoor pursuits, horseriding and the study of trees, saw pictures in the French weekly