South African home surrenders to the landscape
Inside the South Africa home that surrenders to the setting
Design rooted in the Karoo
Driving toward the Mura Retreat in the Klein Karoo valley, the Langeberg mountains appear to rise up and claim the property entirely. The building sits in Lemoenshoek, a valley outside Barrydale, three hours from Cape Town, yet it feels a world away from the city bustle. The structure is low and plastered in the color of the surrounding shale, possessing the quiet confidence of something that has always belonged here.
The owners, a couple from Munich, found the land after a fire claimed the stone house that previously stood there. They arrived with a brief that was as much spiritual as architectural: a modern take on a Karoo farmhouse woven through with monastic restraint. Croatia-based architect Antonio Zaninovic conceived the initial design concept, but unable to execute it from abroad, he handed the project to South African architectural designer Marlon Leggat.
Together with builder Stuart Saggers, Leggat modeled the home on an old monastery, drawing deep-set windows in spirit from Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp. That subtle monastic thread runs throughout the house: a stone bird bath stands in for a baptismal font, while the coat cupboards by the front door hint at confessionals. Orientation does its own quiet work, with large windows facing south to hold the mountain view while shielding the interior from the harshest sun.
Most of the stone used for walls and exterior paving was salvaged from the original house, the fire’s only real survivor reworked into the foundations of what replaced it. The home is generous in scope without feeling overbearing, featuring seven bedrooms, a cloister, a yoga room, and living and dining areas backed by a prep kitchen and scullery. Leggat took on the interiors, seeking calm over spectacle.
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Nature as the hero
“I wanted a sense of peacefulness, austerity,” Leggat says. “Nothing arresting, no bright colours. Here, nature and the outdoors are the heroes.” This philosophy explains why few artworks made the final cut. One piece by Jackson Hlungwani carries an ancestral weight that makes the figures presences rather than objects. Outside, the spoor of sculptor Dylan Lewis marks the earth, nodding to a history much older than the building itself.
In keeping with this instinct, furniture was sourced rather than designed: primal pieces that appear to predate the house. A three-legged chair, carved from a single piece of wood by local carpenter Abel Zata, sits beside a grinding stone found on the owners’ land. One cabinet was built from the timber of old ball-and-claw furniture, with the original screw holes left visible. Nothing here pretends to be new.
At the heart of the house is the fire room—a single space built entirely to honor the ritual of communing around flames. It serves as the home’s emotional center. Outdoors, an infinity pool holds the mountain’s reflection, the water turning the color of the rock above it. When the sun drops and no other light is visible for miles, the stars become the primary focus.
The name Mura comes from the Khoisan word for the two pointer stars that lead the eye to the Southern Cross, believed in San cosmology to be the eyes of a lion watching over the land. The Western Cape is one of the few places on Earth where this constellation is visible year-round, and on a clear night, it is easy to understand why a name drawn from the sky felt right. Mura Retreat offers guests a direct connection to this ancient sky and the arid setting below it.
