Kate Otten Architects is a well known South African practice. Our work has received numerous awards and has been well published both locally and internationally. The work is diverse in scale and type. It includes a variety of Residential projects, a Boutique Hotel, a Conference Facility, Restaurants, Commercial and Retail projects as well as more unusual building types such as an Art Therapy Centre, Community Libraries, Museum Exhibition Space, Restoration work and a Skills Training Facility.
The work deals with developing an architectural language that responds inventively to local conditions of available skills, materials, climate, client, user and site. Our focus is a search for an African identity in architecture that reflects the uniqueness of our landscape, context and way of life. The work is mindful of place and people and considers sustainability from a social, economic and environmental perspective – sustainability of the human spirit is key to our thinking.
Through the way we design buildings, Kate Otten Architects seeks to address the emotional needs of the user. We believe it is a given that the functional and spatial inter-relations of a building should be correctly designed, however, the way a space is designed can shift peoples’ perceptions; the nature of a space or environment can make people feel differently about themselves.
Whilst there is a common language through our work, each building is unique, specifically responding to its own site, materiality and brief
