On a mountainside site that was once part of the historic Klein Welgemeend farm estate, this small case study home sits alongside Ailsa Craig, a sandstone house built in the 1920s by Florence McLaren, who quarried the stone from the very land it stands on. The brief for ANIMA Homes’ cross laminated timber cabin was to add without disturbing, echoing the original house’s steep pitch roof and east facing gable while staying entirely its own thing.
Muizenberg’s summer winds shaped almost every decision: larger windows sit on the sheltered north face, smaller ones brace against the prevailing south wind, and box window seats replace the deck terraces that wouldn’t have survived the gusts. Built from 77mm thick South African pine CLT with a thermal resistance three times the local building requirement, the compact 24 square metre footprint (plus a 13 square metre sleeping mezzanine) runs on solar power, gas, and rainwater harvesting, proof that a small, self-sufficient structure can still hold its own next to a century-old heritage home. We provided Elemental Estimating Services for this project.
