Articles by Thuto Vilakazi

An existing 60+ years old dilapidated house stood on a plot in the inner circle, Whitefield Bangalore. The Inner Circle is part of the Anglo-Indian settlement. Remnants of the colonial era are reflected in the architectural style, beautiful garden, gable-tiled roof and wooden décor, and the antique furniture & curios in the house. The tranquility of the place and the chirping of birds in the large garden fade out the hustle and bustle of city life. The client envisioned a weekend home for a family of 4 adults where they would eventually settle down. The site is surrounded by large old mango trees and a tamarind tree that formed canopies around the existing house. The attempt was to design the new home around this context.

Identity: The design task poses the fundamental question of how to deal with the village structure of Oy-Mittelberg and the associated surroundings. The new town hall is meant to form a symbiosis with the existing structure and closes the urban space towards St.-Anna-Square. The result is a building that continues the structural form of the site and implements functional necessities. The orientation towards traditional construction methods, the associated choice of materials, and the optimization of the building services contribute to a contemporary administrative building, which considers the issue of sustainability over the entire life cycle of the building from production, through use, to deconstruction.

Open-Plan Updated: In the outskirts of Tokyo, this residence finds itself in the middle of the countryside, surrounded by fields and buildings scattered around. The site is almost 300 sq.m., more than sufficient for a small residence.  The immediate thought that came into my mind, when I visited the site for the first time, was that an open-plan, one-story house would be good for this environment.

This is a house for a small family of husband+wife+child, located on the outskirts of Nara. A parking space facing the road in front, extends the full width of the front opening, as to accommodate all the cars for daily use and the motorbikes for the owner’s hobby. This is why the façade is set back to give space to the parking area. The building itself projects a closed image, except for the hobby area on the first floor, which is a wide open space with glass openings facing the collection of motorbikes.

The house sits on a typical landed housing plot with an oncoming road directly facing the front and this becomes a privacy issue. To address this, a vertical court is inserted between the house and its adjoining neighbor. All the main spaces of the house look into this courtyard.