It is not constructed in any unquestioned, time-honored way. Instead it is almost an antithesis of the Ndebele pattern. Devised by intellect and constructed with considerable Western ingenuity, ambitious in its fight against gravity, the house allies itself to an outcrop of gigantic boulders whose rounded solidity it almost mocks by its paper-like openness and spiny assembly. Only the outer form of the boulders and hills carries over, and then not very closely. And so on.
Engagement is the point.
Just as a face mask can be turned inside out and still be a mask of the same face, the structure of the engagement with a design problem is maintained in the mirror image of its ideas. What is pointedly contradicted is simultaneously pointed out. There are univocal structural and safety considerations to be sure, but insofar as the existence and meaning and nature of slope itself is brought to mind, it does not matter which approach is taken to the design, so long as it is done well. Geography and habitation can fully impart their discipline in either case. The roofs of the Transvaal House remind us the distant hills and also the adjacent boulders and the line of low, scrubby trees from which it seems to emerge.