This holiday home captures the beauty and mystery of ancient African ruins in a dazzling contemporary reinterpretation
"Even though you might leave Africa, Africa never leaves you,” says South African-born Julian Koski. He left South Africa for the US as a young man in the 1980s, but his vivid memories of his childhood safari holidays stayed with him. Now living with his wife, Aida, in New York City, working on Wall Street and raising a family of his own—twins Leo and Tess—his thoughts turned once again to his childhood memories of the South African wilderness. “I wanted to give them a piece of what I had as a child growing up,” he says. He saw the potential of a holiday home in a nature reserve to open up another realm for them, a counterpoint to the privilege of New York City. “We wanted to give them a different perspective of the world—something environmental, ecological, human,” he says.
He found a spectacular site overlooking a dam in Thornybush Private Game Reserve, pristine savannah adjacent to the Kruger National Park, and began a process that would realise his dream of a family base in Africa. If here’s one thing that Julian loves as much as a safari holiday, it’s architecture. “My whole life I wanted to become an architect,” says Julian.
“It was always my passion, and this was an opportunity for me to exercise my architectural ambitions.”
So, he set about designing his family’s holiday home himself. Although Julian says he didn’t have a preconceived notion of a “dream house,” he wanted to make some sort of reference to his family in the architecture. The whole idea was inspired by the idea of a family legacy. “Me being South African, and my wife being part Arabic, part Brazilian, we wanted to merge the north and south of Africa,” he says. “I bring a sub-Saharan feel; she brings that north African feel—the more Moorish side of it. So, really, it’s the marriage of the two to make a whole.”