“You know, I’ve been practising Tai Chi for 30 years, and in it, we say, ‘Stand like a mountain, flow like a river,’” says architect Paul Oosthuizen. Yes, he’s passionate about the Chinese martial art, but in this particular instance, he’s using the Tai Chi principle to illustrate his motivation behind the design of a very special beachfront property.
Receding into a thicket of milkwood trees on a rocky outcrop that runs down into the Keurbooms estuary in Plettenberg Bay, the house in question is undeniably sculptural, with an interplay of curved and angular lines, and the raw materiality of a concrete finish.
“The concrete plays on the edge of that seemingly impossible fusion of soft and hard,” says Paul. “You want to be threatened by it because of its…
