Quirk, Red & Yellow, and BrandsEye, Cape Town

Located in Cape Town, South Africa, Quirk, Red & Yellow and BrandsEye were positioned on the entire top floor, the majority of the second floor and a new roof top pavilion. Previously these spaces were an internal car park and the CMT operation.

The first time Tom Karpinski visited the building it was obvious that the challenge would be in creating a suitable interior for the said entities and dealing with enormous chasms of space. This is always a challenge acoustically and thermally but a great opportunity for an amazing interior. The approach was to create intimate meeting areas where ceilings were introduced into all the enclosed spaces, these were arranged around the centralized ‘main access’ the remainder of the top floor was a massive open plan seating area, conference hall and shared canteen space.

Karpinski Design kept as many original features we could in the interior and used a combination of concrete and brickwork construction for all the interior walls. Later these walls were left raw or painted depending on which area and final identity we wanted to achieve. Karpinski Design took inspiration from the colour scheme left by the CMT operation and introduced paint patterns/graphics and techniques to retain some of the factory feel.

In the main Quirk open plan space a 3 way ‘room within room’ was introduced to define separate areas, bring in the warmth of raw timber and to create a centrepiece which housed 3 interlinked meeting rooms.

The school was designed to house student areas, training rooms, lecturer offices, review rooms and large conference facilities. Brick on end details in the walls were introduced to bring some texture to the large extents of brickwork and acoustic dampening measures were introduced to break up all the hard surfaces.

The roof top pavilion was built from scratch and extensive structural additions were made to accommodate the new structure. The pavilion has a large steel staircase with views over Salt River to the Hottentots Holland mountains and leads up to a full bar and entertainment area with extensive astroturfed terrace with views up Devil’s Peak mountain.