If you’ve been with me for a while, you know that Susan and I were wed in Kenya two decades ago in September. Roughly one year before buying Rosslyn, we eloped. Fortunate to celebrate our nuptials in a traditional Maasai wedding, following a week and a half of safari adventuring, Kenya is a pivotal part of our backstory. But that’s not the only overlap with a Dwell article that struck an enduring chord with me four years ago. A patient and nonlinear process with incremental progress, the article allows, renders rewards aplenty when transforming a time tattered residential property into an welcoming and design forward oasis.
[Let’s rewind two decades to Susan and my] elopement. “In 2005… we were wed in a traditional Maasai ceremony” at Cottar’s 1920s Camp located at the remote frontier of the “Maasai Mara in Kenya and the Tanzania Serengeti game reserve”. (Source: Lucky Lottery)
Sandwiched between our Lapine House rehab and our Rosslyn rehab, we affirmed our commitment to one another (and to a life of adventure!) among a nomadic tribe who dwell in communal homes called manyatta, comprised of simple dwellings (enkaji) and enclosure fencing (boma) constructed out of acacia branches, grass, cook fire ash, mud, and cow dung.
Naeem Biviji and Bethan Rayner, the husband and wife architects behind Studio Propolis, are the creators, from design — *redesign* really — to hands-on construction (and even furniture fabrication) who transformed two simple buildings in Kenya’s capital into an aesthetically seductive and lifestyle-centric home.
Their creative process was 100% hands-on. And it was gradual. Slow. Patient. Nonlinear and iterative. Trial and error. Exploratory. Experimental. A patient process that feels familiar to me, that dovetails with my posts / ideas about slow rehab. (See “Slowness & Friction”.)
I’d like to highlight a few excerpts from that article that felt familiar then and that still feels familiar today.
A six-month project, designer Naeem Biviji thought when he first saw the pair of 1950s cottages in a roughly one-acre compound in Nairobi that he and his wife, Bethan Rayner, hopes to refurbish rapidly. Instead, it took them 15 years.
[…]
“This was not a linear design process. This was a hands-on, handmade process.” — Naeem Biviji, designer and resident
[…]
“We started to think of what we could salvage from the site and how we could reuse it. It was an incremental thing,” Naeem says. “As our skills evolved, so did our thinking.”
[…]
“For us the design process is iterative, a series of ideas, rather than a light-bulb thing.” — Bethan Rayner, designer and resident
(Source: “The Case for Patience”, by Zahid Sardar (text) and Khadija M. Farah (photos) and featured in Dwell, May/June 2021, pp. 78-87)
This slowly evolving, iterative process is precisely how I describe Susan and my Rosslyn adventure. Nonlinear. Incremental. Enriching. And totally life consuming!
And all these years later it’s still how we approach most of our projects. Patient. Nonlinear. Experimental. Curious. Collaboratively creative. And deeply fulfilling!
[NB: The title of this article as it appeared in the print edition of Dwell, “The Case for Patience”, subsequently changed in the online version to “Two Cottages—Renovated Using Less Expensive Than $150K—Embrace Living With Kenya’s Wildlife“.]
What do you think?