06Academic project

Desert Oasis — Divining Refuge

Typology: Retreat / Adaptive reuse
Context: Greenside Design Center
Location: Karoo

'As Above So Below' — an underground refuge that keeps an existing structure intact and cuts the new spaces into the earth.

Academic project, BA Interior Design, Greenside Design Center. Images are design visualisations and drawings.

Approach across the plain — the cut in the ground reads as the entrance

Sunken courtyard with water channel and high walls

Interior well drawing light down into the plan

Stained glass and ashcrete at the lower level

Hand sketches, sections and plan stepping down into the ground — Sketches, sections and plan

View all 5 images full size

Narrative

By taking what is already there and cutting downward, the building retains its spatial integrity while something new is realised beneath it. The oasis acknowledges four elements: earth, air, water and fire.

The vastness of the Karoo speaks inherently to air, so the plan answers it with sunken wells and high ceilings that reproduce that expansive feeling indoors.

Fire is structural rather than decorative: ashcrete stands in for concrete, with clay, wood ash and stained glass completing the palette.

Key decisions

A water channel wending through the interior, branching in response to the plan
Ashcrete in place of concrete, so fire becomes part of the structure
Clay, wood ash and stained glass as the material palette
Proportion and geometry as the ordering system

Nicole's role and scope

Concept
sectional development
materiality and documentation

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