Design Analysis Of A House Fagan, Its Roots And Significance

This essay is a study on House Fagan built in 1965. The paper will carry out a design analysis on the architecture, then it will proceed to an exploration of the social, historical and economic roots and how these have influenced the design of house Fagan. The reason for this study is that the house is significant in the problem-solving design with the use of modern building materials to aid the designs, as well as it demonstrates the architect's attempt to create South African Architecture which understands the historical vernacular without duplicating it. House Fagan, also known as ‘Die Es', is designed by Architect Gawie Fagan.

The house is located in Camps Bay, Cape Town, built on a steep site overlooking the coastline and the Atlantic Ocean. The house itself and most things inside are made by Gwen and Gawie Fagan, along with their son and three daughters.

The design of the house shows evidence of influences from renowned Modern Movement architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. Fagan abstracts feelings for the vernacular in a modern manner with his use of design elements; He attempts to create South African Architecture which understands the historical vernacular without duplication it, as well as responds to the site and the climatic environments.

Analysis

Die Es was built for Fagan's family of six during weekends and time after school. The construction began with the basement workshop where all joinery and metal work can be completed on site. From the roof to the minor hand wrought detail, the house demonstrated great craftsmanship. The family all enjoyed music and had the desire for a general communal living space, but also with separation from the studies and bedrooms. Harsh South-East winds come from the street side, resulted in the house turning its back on the street and wind, with openings for entrance and carefully positioned windows for the mountain view and lights. The carport lined with grille wall and the staircase leading downwards to the entrance from an airlock that protects the heavy front door. The entrance passage increases in height and widens out as on enters to the building, which ends on a platform with a view of the sea beyond. From this platform, an open-air staircase with treads to ceiling balustrade that created a screening leads up to the bedrooms. The same entrance platform also descends a few steps down to the spacious living room. The living spaces including the living, dining rooms, the patio, and the kitchen can all be screened in different combinations for different functional purposes.

The roof shape conforms to the plan by enhancing the separateness of each bedroom, which also creates privacy. The roof that contours over the bedrooms demonstrates formality to the views and creates a rhythm over the large communal space. The western façade has horizontal sliding shutters that protect the bedrooms form the direct afternoon sun and vertical sliding shutters for the living room. The hearth symbolized by the large chimney tucked in the main living room forms a gathering point and represents the heart of the house. The fireplace is considered as the most important architectural element of the home due to its function of providing warmth for the inhabitants and heat for food preparation throughout the history. Traditionally it also formed as a gathering space of the house, which Le Corbusier also adapted similar vernacular in his architecture in which the fireplace formed part of the ground that the house was built on.

Fireplaces in the Cape Vernacular houses were used mainly for cooking and located on the ends of the buildings. Fagan employs the fireplace in both functional and symbolical ways. The fireplaces at Die Es continues to provide warmth to the house but rarely used for cooking purposes, as well as it acts as the focal point of the home, through its extended dimensions. During winter, the fireplace becomes a gathering sitting point, which marks the true center of the house, as indicated by its name, The Hearth. The creation of the fireplace at Die Es has rooted not only in the vernacular but also in the form that was visualized by Fagan. The design was first a very small sketch made on a cigarette box when Fagan returned from an overseas trip. When he tried to redraw the house from the sketch he realized that the size of a conventional fireplace would not work. Fagan then scaled the sketch exactly on the cigarette box, which resulted in size and the extended chimney that formed the winter roof. The sketches also suggest that Fagan has taken inspiration for the form of the fireplace from the old lime at Mowbray, Cape Town.

An interesting mediation between vernacular uniformity and a Modern Movement tendency to separate elements is achieved in Die Es, where the fireplace reads as part of the house when view externally, but on closer inspection is actually separated from the living space by a narrow window on the left and a glazed roof light above. Similarly, an external fireplace cantilevers from the sea facing courtyard wall. Fagan recognized the associations of the chimney and exaggerated this feature to create a fireplace room for family and a focus point externally. Fagan's fondness for the stereotomic quality of the Cape vernacular wall results in his use of masonry architecture that acts both as the structure and enclosure. Fagan follows a vernacular approach when forming small openings in external walls. However, if large openings are required for views such as Die Es, a Modern Movement approach is taken as walls are interrupted by large floor-to-ceiling openings; The structural and formal continuity of the wall is retained where it acts as a ground floor support and large openings are formed with rounded edges.

Fagan viewed the roof as an important design element, whether it is folded planes or molded plaster, both to and explaining the plan. It is the plasticity and whitewall surfaces that relate to our traditional architecture and sit so well in our landscape, rather than the separated rigid forms dictated by the typical wings of Cape Dutch homestead. The carport roof at Die Es connects the roof and floor elements through the use of a timber column, which also helps to demarcate spatial zones. At Die Es a sinusoidal roof form holds the upper floor spaces together. Glazed sections above the internal doors foster a spatial continuity that allows the roof to lightly control and hold the private spaces. Fagan's use of proportional systems is based on Jay Hambidge's book Dynamic symmetry, which holds many similarities to Le Corbusier's Modulor, as well as the Renaissance influences on Cape Dutch Architecture. Fagan has derived an understanding from these proportional systems and used to resolve his design solutions. The Cape farmhouse in its arrangement of internal spaces, suggests the significance of the family and the importance of defining such spaces. Die Es has used proportional systems to organize all elements of the house from the general plan to the handcrafted details.

Fagan's approach to efficiency is technological, spatial and functional. Materials are always used in their purest form. In Die Es, reinforced concrete is left as is, sans plaster or paint, even when it could possibly compromise the integrity of the overall form, where the first slab is exposed on all edges. Brickwork is bagged and painted, which is an aesthetic tendency Fagan has inherited from the roughly textured nature of the Cape vernacular. Roof timbers are varnished but the doors are painted to give symbolic expression to their interior and exterior nature. In spatial and functional terms service zones are tightly organized and combined so that more space is available for living and sleeping. Volumes are exploited to provide spaces for sleeping or storage, while passages become study and play spaces. Fagan mostly adopts a centrally entered plan, which limits the length of circulation routes. The Cape vernacular tradition is formally composed of white rectangular forms, which through their shape and color provide a strong counterpoint to the linear landscape. Fagan's houses draw on these similarities but provide tension through a more romantic and physical connection with their surroundings. The junction between earth and house is, in most cases, where entry occurs and a conclusion could be that Fagan wishes to re-associate the visitor with his earthly beginnings before entering the private realm. Die Es steps down with the site and seemingly forms it out of the plastic white walls that grow from the garden.

The significance of Die Es

There are certain elements of the house that are significant in its design, the unconventional roof that mimics the waves of the ocean, the exaggerated fireplace, the framing of views and its respect to the Cape vernacular Architecture. The house is also unique in its positioning, as the back of the house is turned against the street in response to the harsh climatic conditions of howling winds that sweep down the slopes of table mountain. The house also holds significant value for the architect as it was built by the family from the structure to the details.

Social, political and economic roots through the history of Apartheid

Fagan has developed economical design approaches to both space and the use of materials. Along with Modern Movement attitudes towards functional appropriateness, these are based on an appreciation of the simple technologies of the Cape vernacular, where limited materials were at hand and inventive approaches had to be found. These approaches were made with economic circumstances in South Africa after the Second World War when resources were in short supply. Fagan reuses materials, such as the front door at Die Es, which was taken from old copper boilers and Japanese fishing nets. Die Es achieve huge monetary savings as it was built by himself and his family.

Over the years of transition to democracy in 1994, the built landscape of South Africa is still signify formed by the historical processes and power play that marks the methods used in current spatial practices. Spatial practice experiences a diverse landscape where multiple publics exist and compete for resources and opportunities. Apart from the historically established built landscapes, the City spaces are merging as South African society is opened up the globalizing forces in with the tensions becoming more apparent creating an increasing division between social groups. The force joining of the previously distinct social groups and their distinctly formed spaces with their specific practice of heritage became new challenges in the postmodern world.

The transition to democracy has been good to South African Architects and Architecture, where architecture has played great roles in reconfiguring the City and reimagining the national identity as South Africans. Many questions about Architecture's responsibilities to reshape and rebuild the society were raised, which a number of recent projects have set out to address these questions, with one of them being House Fagan.

Conclusion

Die Es mediates between the functional rationalism of the Modern Movement and the formal plasticity of the singular Cape dwelling. It includes replicative features such as the chimney, which becomes a winter room through many of its extended dimensions. A play between organic and regular geometric forms enhances the diversity and a Cape ambiance is affected through the roughly plastered white painted walls, quarry tile floors and timber-syncopated roof. The architectural promenade is well responded to the Cape vernacular and a true response to its concept.