The Fagan House
Gwen Fagan, medical doctor, author, landscape design PhD, and builder of one of Cape Town’s most beautiful homes, gives HOMEY the tour before her 99th birthday.
INTERIOR / AESTHETICS / 25.01.24
Read time / 7 mins
Mikael wears his take on an office t-shirt in a formal mid-weight cotton pique. On the blind behind him is the FIELDS brand totem, designed by Daniel Ting Chong.
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Creative Director
Videographer
ROICE NEL
Writer
DANIËL GELDENHUYS
[01] Below the staircase, an Erik Laubscher painting echoes the cowhide backrest on a Le Corbusier LC1 Sling Chair. Teal glass Japanese fishing floats hang throughout the house. “We picked them up in the sea and we made lights out of them,” says Gwen.
Writer
DANIËL GELDENHUYS
Below the staircase, an Erik Laubscher painting echoes the cowhide backrest on a Le Corbusier LC1 Sling Chair. Teal glass Japanese fishing floats hang throughout the house. “We picked them up in the sea and we made lights out of them,” says Gwen.
[01] Below the staircase, an Erik Laubscher painting echoes the cowhide backrest on a Le Corbusier LC1 Sling Chair. Teal glass Japanese fishing floats hang throughout the house. “We picked them up in the sea and we made lights out of them,” says Gwen.
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“We sat around the fireplace every evening,” Gwen shares. “We had our supper here, and our kids did their homework here. That’s why we call this place Die Es.” The home's white external walls and fireplace are inspired by Cape Dutch vernacular architecture.
The living room’s ocean facing floor-to-ceiling windowpanes can slide all the way open. Gawie designed the home according to modernist spacial principals, incorporating the American artist Jay Hambidge’s Dynamic Symmetry compositional rules.
“I must apologise for the way I walk,” says Gwendoline Fagan, just over a month before her 99th birthday. “I’m on pills that make me wonky.” We’re in the entrance hall of Die Es (Afrikaans for The Hearth), the Camps Bay house her late husband, renowned South African architect Gabriël Theron (known to most as Gawie) Fagan, drew on the back of a cigarette box on a flight from Cape Town to Pretoria in 1964. Strapped for cash after moving to the mother city, Gawie, Gwen and their four children built the house themselves—as in, with their own hands.
The lowest level of the house was finished first so that the family could use it as a workshop to craft custom fittings.
Gawie and Gwen were a power couple of note. Gawie, at 56, won the Trans‐Atlantic Cape to Uruguay yacht race in 1982 on handicap, six years later sailing north to Portugal to celebrate the 500-year anniversary of Bartolomeu Dias’ arrival in the Cape. Backtrack to the start of his storied architecture career, and Gawie put his pilot’s license to good use, reducing travel time by flying himself across South Africa to supervise construction on 50 branches of Volkskas, the bank that was later acquired by Absa. Gwen studied medicine at UCT. In her memoir, Gwendoline’s Gawie, she recalls working at a military hospital in Pretoria, juggling four babies and running a dairy farm with Gawie without the faintest whiff of complaint. In Gwen’s Roses at the Cape of Good Hope, published by her and Gawie’s Bree Street Publications, Gawie’s to-scale photographs take centre stage. At the time of writing, Gwen has written and published six books, and is handwriting another one about her children growing up on the farm in Pretoria. As Gawie’s architecture business evolved in Cape Town, Gwen pivoted from her medical career, fulfilling the role of business partner, creative collaborator, and researcher. She was also the architecture firm’s chief landscape designer, for which she obtained a PhD in 1995. On holiday, the couple biked across Namibia on a Moto Guzzi 850.
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The upstairs library in Gwen and Gawie’s room is dedicated to architecture. From key inspiration sources like Le Corbusier to South African small towns, the collection covers vast ground.
Gawie’s minimalist door handle design appears throughout the house.
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Gwen is proud of her indigenous garden. There were pine trees on the property when they purchased it in the 60s: “I took them all out and I planted only indigenous plants.” Inside, the Le Corbusier LC4 Chaise Lounge characterises the home’s laidback elegance.
Gawie was very specific when commissioning the Agamograph from his friend Erik Laubscher for the entrance hall. Gwen laid the stones on the floor herself, using rocks dug from the property before the build began.
Die Es is arguably Gwen and Gawie’s greatest collaboration, their residence for 56 of their 71-year marriage, and the most personal inanimate manifestation of their partnership. “The roof over your head takes on a new meaning when built by yourself,” Gawie wrote in Twenty Cape Houses. Help was hired for some of the heavy lifting, but the family's personal touch is present in every aspect of the house. Gawie had to plaster the chimney himself, mainly because his handmade scaffolding was so rickety that it was too risky for anyone else to use. Meanwhile, “each child was given a job,” Gwen writes in her account of the build in Gwendoline’s Gawie. “Toetie [Helena’s pet name] had to throw the stones into the mixer, Jessie the sand and Lida the water, and I would tip the mix into the wheelbarrows for Gawie and Hennie to push and cast the concrete into the foundation trenches.” A photograph shows Helena doing her clarinet homework while her sister works on the roof nearby.
Gawie had to plaster the chimney himself, mainly because his handmade scaffolding was so rickety that it was too risky for anyone else to use.
The lowest level of the house, now the garage, was finished first so that the family could use it as a workshop to craft custom fittings: hooks, hinges, window tracks, and door handles. “[They] feel more responsive to the hand and heart than anything I could buy,” wrote Gawie. A strong sense of collaboration runs through the house. The living room library is filled only with books by friends. The Steinway piano on the landing where the children would perform for guests was passed down from Gawie’s grandfather. Tiles, crockery and artwork were made by friends. Gawie commissioned an Agamograph artwork from Erik Laubscher in the entrance hall under very specific tonal instructions, a key idea being that, if viewed from an angle looking towards the ocean, the predominant colour scheme is blue. If viewed from the other side, facing the mountain, the colour scheme is a medley of earth tones.
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The bed in the living room “is where Gawie and his two brothers were made, and where they were born,” Gwen laughs. “And that’s why we got it in here.” Henry bought his parents the hanging chair on the right with his first salary.
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The Fagans’ son, Henry, laid the wavy rooftop with laminated 25mm x 100mm pine strips. “Hennie laid this whole roof,” says Gwen. “He laid it when he was 12 years old and he took 12 days to lay it.” All grown up, Henry’s engineering firm is next door to his late father’s architecture practice on Cape Town’s Bree Street. His portfolio includes the Kirstenbosch Tree Canopy “Boomslang” Walkway and the Cape Town FIFA 2010 World Cup Stadium. “He’s a sweetie pie!” Gwen adds.
Gwen still goes to the office every Monday and throws a dinner party every Wednesday, with the help of Bridget Joshua, her carer. Gwen is unguarded, mischievous, funny, and disarmingly generous with her time and knowledge. Eager to educate, she’s toying with the idea of renting out the ground floor guest room to artists or scholars who want to draw from the house’s resources for their research. She tells Die Es’ stories with a mixture of pride and a matter-of-fact tone born of hard work and humility. Her home’s attributes range from charming to astounding, perhaps the most impressive of which is a fusion of covetable modernist aesthetics with an inviting, tranquil mood. A successful family project, for sure. —
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Die Es borders a nature reserve in Cape Town’s Camps Bay hills, overlooking the ocean. “When you arrive at the car port,” Gwen explains, “the idea is that you can see right through the brick grille towards the sea.”
Overflow from the living room library rests on a vintage drawing board. Gwen has published six books and is currently working on a memoir about her children’s early lives on their dairy farm in Pretoria.
Architecture Firm
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The Fagans built Die Es themselves, starting by selling their Fiat Multipla to buy a second-hand concrete mixer. Throughout the build, every family member had a job. Gawie plastered the chimney, while Gwen and their daughter Alida painted the shutters.
Gwen matches the bedspread in her and Gawie’s bedroom. After he died in 2020, Gwen moved to a different room. Photograph by Antoinette Degens.