[imagesource: Paris Brummer / VISI]
When a sculptor and an interior designer come together to create a living space together, the results are bound to make global headlines.
Curator and creative consultant Maybe Corpaci and her partner, sculptural artist Rodan Kane Hart (both pictured up top), have made quite the impression by taking over the entire top storey on the sixth floor of an old building in Cape Town’s city centre.
The 1930s Exchange Building on Cape Town’s St Georges Mall was originally built for a shipping company but has since become the couple’s home, Rodan’s studio, and Maybe’s muse for her interior design business.
The Guardian has been attracted to the grandeur that Rodan and Maybe have curated, giving a little feature shout-out to the apartment and all its wonderous furnishings:
A polished granite plinth, ornate turret and richly decorated cornice speak of an era of opulence and prosperity. The black and white marble entrance hall leads to a teak-panelled shipping room, while arched doorways and parquet floors are found throughout.
…The entrance hall is home to a Saruyama Island two-seater sofa and settee, both by Toshiyuki Kita for Moroso. A pair of Ant chairs by Arne Jacobsen for Fritz Hansen are positioned below an artwork by Unathi Mkonto.
You get the gist…
Rodan has been collecting furniture since his 20s, so thankfully this apartment left them with “a lot of space to fill”. Now his collection of largely midcentury pieces fills the rooms up nicely:
Maybe said that their apartment grew around the furniture rather than from an interior design concept or preconceived idea:
“It starts with one piece and then we create a narrative around it,” says Maybe. “It happens quite organically. There’s nothing that’s premeditated about it, or specific to a layout that we stick to.”
The apartment is very much a meeting of two individual styles – Maybe’s in soft whites, creams and beiges in, for example, the living room, while Rodan’s preferences are, she says, “angular, black and chrome”.
Rodan sees furniture as functional art in its own right, a practical manifestation of what he explores through sculpture, saying that he thinks “architecture and design are fields imbued with history and experience”.
Roden and Maybe’s personal creative laboratory will never be finished, they say, because “it’s a playground, an experimental place where there are no mistakes”, where “inspiration, new interests… another layer of history” is always being added.
[source:guardian]
