THE MOVEABLE FEAST

COMBINING THE BOLD LINEARITY AND MATERIALITY OF ITS ARCHITECTURE WITH EXUBERANTLY ART-FILLED INTERIORS, THIS CAPE TOWN HOME IS AN INSPIRED TAKE ON RELAXED FAMILY LIVING, 21st CENTURY-STYLE.

- ROBYN ALEXANDER/BUREAUX PRODUCTION SVEN ALBERDING/BUREAU

"FRANCIS ISN'T IMPRESSED BY IT AT ALL," says homeowner Willeen Le Roux, laughing, about the striking raw-brick facade of the Cape Town home she shares with her nine-year-old son and her partner, creative director Craig Ferguson.

"We've tried to explain to him that the inspiration was the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Marrakech, but he isn't convinced by that."

Young Francis has dubbed his home "the Minecraft house"- a reference to its looking, in his eyes, much like a building block from the popular online game - and even though he and his parents have lived here for five years now, he still regularly asks, "When are we going to paint the outside?" Certainly, its blend of bold architectural lines with a zesty red brick facade and arresting "popped-out" steel window frames makes this home a somewhat unconventional building for the area - the peaceful, equestrian hillside locale of Zwaanswyk in Cape Town's southern suburbs, where new dwellings tend to be low-slung, plastered and painted in subtle shades of pale.

Rather like the house alongside this one, which occupies the other half of the large, subdivided plot of land that the couple found in 2019 with Craig's brother large, subdivided plot of land that the couple found in 2019 with Craig's brother Nick, a property developer.

The plan was always to subdivide and build concurrently, which is what the siblings did - with the very capable assistance of Nick's father-in-law, who is a master builder.