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ALTERATION TO EXISTING DWELLING

Sunbird Cottage

A formally dark and dingy three bedroom suburban house across the vlei from Muizenberg Mountain was completely transformed into a cozy cottage that takes full advantage of its ideal orientation and position on site. 

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INTERIOR FITOUT

Putter Kitchen

A formally dark and dingy three bedroom suburban house across the vlei from Muizenberg Mountain was completely transformed into a cozy cottage that takes full advantage of its ideal orientation and position on site. 

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ALTERATION TO EXISTING DWELLING

House Jewinson

A split level home with unchallenged views over False Bay above Froggy Pond had been enlarged and expanded over the years resulting in a big house with no space. Some considered reconfiguration, addition of extensive deck and new interior fit out turned, Michele Berger and Richard Jewison’s brief on its head, addressing their needs in unexpected ways. 

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A formally dark and dingy three bedroom suburban house across the vlei from Muizenberg Mountain was completely transformed into a cozy cottage that takes full advantage of its ideal orientation and position on site. 

ALTERATION TO EXISTING DWELLING

Sunbird Cottage

When Sue and Jerome Putter bought their Walmer home 33 years ago, they vowed to update two areas of this classic 100 year old farmhouse, one of those was the outdated, dark kitchen on the South West corner of the house. Their new country style kitchen both acknowledges the property’s history as one of the original farmhouses in this part of Port Elizabeth and brings it up to date with beautiful light and views of their magnificent garden.

INTERIOR FITOUT

Putter Kitchen

A split level home with unchallenged views over False Bay above Froggy Pond had been enlarged and expanded over the years resulting in a big house with no space. Some considered reconfiguration, addition of extensive deck and new interior fit out turned, Michele Berger and Richard Jewison’s brief on its head, addressing their needs in unexpected ways. 

ALTERATION TO EXISTING DWELLING

House Jewinson

The move out to the southern peninsula afforded, SPACE + FIELD principal, Donné Atkinson to, at last, begin to apply into practice the theory around building soil, improving biodiversity and creating conditions conducive to life, learnt over years of passionate self study and research. This small yet unexpected coastal garden was transformed from rubble filled sand dune to productive and beautiful oasis to original Victorian semidetached cottage in Simons Town.

HOME GARDEN

Seaforth Cottage Garden

About us

SPACE + FIELD is a small and agile design practice and consultancy that specialises in creating beautiful, resilient and environmentally sensitive spaces for people across scales and contexts. We are especially interested in intervening in areas where radical improvement is possible through good design and implementation, transforming underutilized spaces of potential into highly valued ones. 

Collaboration with other professionals, including engineers, green building consultants, permaculture designers and interiors designers amongst others, enable us to take on a broad range of projects from small renovations, alterations and additions for residential properties, new building design, resilient ecologically rich landscape designs for gardens and parklands or development of strategies for urban regeneration at a neighborhood scale. 
 

Principal, Donné Atkinson is a professional architect, environmentalist, permaculturist and self taught landscape designer with a passion for regenerative design and creating better habitats for all life within spaces occupied by people. She believes that biodiversity should be woven into our urban landscapes, integrating beauty and wonder of the natural world into our daily lives through the good design of spaces that we inhabit. She spent almost 10 years in the field of training other built environment professionals in green building and sustainable built environments honing her understanding of how the built environment impacts on the natural one and exploring ways of not only mitigating negative impact but seeking to regenerate ecosystems through built environment projects. 2019 saw a return to practice and the formation of SPACE + FIELD. 

Services

Architecture

Landscape Design

Sustainability

Project Management

Consulting

What we do:

From interior fit outs, renovations, alterations and additions to new building design to gardens and resilient urban neighborhoods, we apply our broad design and systems thinking skill sets to brick and mortar architectural design, garden design and soil improvement strategies, plant layouts and detailed plant palettes to sustainable strategy development for larger projects.

Architecture

We design buildings and interiors fit outs. Registered professional architects offering partial services in the form of design advice, visioning and concept development through to full service offering as principal agent responsible for design and delivery of project from inception and concept design through to contract and construction of new buildings, alteration and addition or renovations. Highly practical, simple and functional designs that add beauty, joy and richness to the lives of its occupants.

Landscape Design

We design landscapes and gardens. Self taught, deeply passionate design of living landscapes with a basis in sound ecological design and permaculture. Architectural training enables a view of design that integrates buildings to landscape, inside to out, seamlessly, where building and landscape are designed as two parts of the whole habitat. The focus of the practice is in producing low maintenance, low input, biodiverse landscapes that both bring joy to human occupants and rich, thriving ecologies to urban and suburban environments

Sustainability

We advise on energy efficiency strategies, water saving strategies, creating comfortable human environments, improving ecological design, food sovereignty and responsible material use with inputs from broad range of specialists for both buildings and landscapes.

Project Management

We manage projects for built environment, training development and sustainable environment projects for a broad range of stakeholders including NGOs, universities and institutions and others.

"When we set out to almost completely rebuild our home, we knew that our most important investment would be in the services of a skilled, creative and perceptive architect. Working with Donné over the last few years has been such a stress-free and rewarding experience. She completely understood what we were wanting to achieve and collaborated with us to make it happen in a way that suited our priorities and our budget. Thanks to Donné, we now have a home space that brings us deep joy on a daily basis. We sing her praises to anyone who remarks on our beautiful home!"

Bruce & Rebecca

"Donné transformed our house into something special. We bought it for the views over False Bay. But there were drawbacks, with one tiny, cramped bedroom and another that was split into 2 parts. The bathrooms were old and cramped, and the kitchen, despite being open plan, did not optimize on the space or the views. Donne was amazing to work with. She came up with clever ideas which were affordable. Her vision has given us a really light, bright, spacious home."

Richard & Michelle

Client Testimonials

Principal, Donné Atkinson is a professional architect, environmentalist, permaculturist and self taught landscape designer with a passion for regenerative design and creating better habitats for all life within spaces occupied by people. She believes that biodiversity should be woven into our urban landscapes, integrating beauty and wonder of the natural world into our daily lives through the good design of spaces that we inhabit. She spent almost 10 years in the field of training other built environment professionals in green building and sustainable built environments honing her understanding of how the built environment impacts on the natural one and exploring ways of not only mitigating negative impact but seeking to regenerate ecosystems through built environment projects. 2019 saw a return to practice and the formation of SPACE + FIELD. 

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