Johannesburg studio GASS Architecture have recently completed the Westcliff Pavilion. This steel-framed residence is located on the Westcliff Ridge in Johannesburg, South Africa. The cottage at 28A Pallinghurst is a steel-framed pavilion structure located on the Westcliff Ridge in Johannesburg, South Africa. This 2 bedroom dwelling, nestled away in its wooded surroundings, is positioned just before the inception of a major sheer face of the Westcliff Ridge. This affords the building a private, tranquil hiding place in the trees juxtaposed with a feeling of floating above the ridge combined with magnificent views of Johannesburg. From its hiding place on the edge of the cliff this steel framed pavilion is constructed primarily from I-sections for beams and square hollow tubes for columns.
From an environmental perspective, access to the site is quite complex, having to traverse down a very long, narrow driveway through several people’s private properties, and half way down to the ridge to the site itself over an existing garden. Because of this, we wanted to bring in as few construction vehicles as possible, especially large concrete trucks. Thus a steel framed structure seemed logistically the far easier method. This also allowed the subcontractor to essentially build the structure off-site, and bring in a steel “kit of parts” and simply assemble them on the site itself. Also, the steel members could be hand carried down to the site from smaller trucks parked further up the ridge, impacting the site significantly less than either masonry or concrete would have. By using steel, the only disruption to the ground and the Ridge was for the footings of the main structural steel columns, leaving the majority of the environment untouched.
