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Playing houseWe cocooned in the 80s, became yuppies in the 90s, slowly segueing into children of the Age of Aquarius, but nothing felt authentic. Finally, we’re coming home to a trend called hiving. Nia Magoulianiti-McGregor reports

Property investor Michael Rae hardly ever goes out. Is he aged or infi rm? No, he’s a sprightly 33. Is he an agoraphobic or a recluse? Not at all, he hosts frequent movie nights in his indoor cinema and has friends over once a week to play basketball at his home court. He’s also a successful businessman – ‘I have at least fi ve meetings a day at home’ – and lucky in love, too. He’s engaged to be married to 30-year-old extrovert Natalie Ward.

But Michael, whether he gives a toss about it or not, is a trendsetter. He is at the social coalface of a global phenomenon that has reached this country: your home is not just your castle, it’s your comfort, your sanctuary and your indoor gym, too.

Overseas, this ‘coming home’ trend has been linked to a concept called FOW or Fear of the Outside World. The trend involves spending time with extended family and friends (and often redefi ning the concept of family to include good friends and your daughter’s boyfriend, too) in a house in which you’ve invested a huge amount of energy. Greg Potterton, MD of trend-spotting company Instant Grass, says it’s a global concept initiated by 9/11, bird fl u, the Asian tsunami and hurricanes. While it can be connected to crime and violence in South Africa, it’s not necessarily about that. ‘The trend has moved here anyway. Whatever its origin, the outcome is it’s cool to spend more and more time at home.’

Johannesburg-based psychologist Judith Ancer says, ‘FOW sounds more like a US thing. I’m not sure how South African it is, but lately there is a notion of investing in one’s community.’

Greg agrees. ‘The 80s concept of cocooning was about shutting out the outside world and making sure your house was dripping luxury, but this trend is about going back to basics and connecting. It’s about family and community, even if it’s not a traditional family structure, and about refl ecting your individual style in your living space,’ he says. ‘It’s a more spiritual place to be. The right people are around you. It has a more emotional aspect.’

Psychologist Dr Janne Dannerup, who lives in Johannesburg, says cocooning did families no favours. ‘The early access to home-entertainment resulted in cocooning. But many couples had not developed suffi cient shared interests and values, as well as the communication tools to support such close-quarters living. Cocooning tended to isolate partners from much needed interaction with their peers. As a result, many family units were dissolved through divorce.’

Then came the 1990s, which saw anybody who was anybody ‘feng shui’ their homes and rush to buy yoga mats. Greg says that period had a very contrived feel to it. ‘It was a backlash, a reaction to the decade of opulence that had just been. It had a “like, hey, shoo” element to it, it wasn’t the real thing. Now people want an honest, less stylised (but still stylish) way of life. There is yearning for authentic living.’ He says people are wanting to recreate that feeling you get on a family holiday with lots of activity under the same roof. ‘Now, people want that feeling every weekend, not just on holiday, and with a redefi ned family.’

Michael’s house took two years to build. ‘It’s a one bedroom house with good proportions. It’s about the quality of the experience

– having everything in one house. Besides the cinema and basketball court, I have a cigar lounge and a cigar shop, too. I’m looking at building a gym as I can’t stand peak times at the local gym. I live on top of a mountain in Bryanston and sometimes it feels like I’m on top of the world. I have everything here. I don’t like leaving.’

This is borne out by US market research fi rm and trends company Yankelovich Monitor, which recently concretised the trend by naming it. ‘Hiving’ – where we live in a sort of human beehive set up for connection and activity – is now an accepted buzzword. Hiving has three main elements, according to the Monitor: home becomes a sort of ‘central command’ for social activities, hivers seek more connection with family, friends and neighbours and they put family, friends and neighbours fi rst on their social priority list. In an article called ‘The Buzz about Hiving’, president of Yankelovich Monitor, J Walker Smith wrote, ‘Through hiving, home is the best place to re-establish relationships and connect with others.’ There is, nevertheless, a strong engagement with the outside world. ‘People are emerging to become a part of their neighbourhoods and greater communities,’ he says.

Actor Susan Sarandon may have encapsulated the notion by saying recently, ‘Everything to do with New York feels like my ▷

Playing house

Property investor Michael Rae works and plays from the comfort of his Bryanston home

This story at a glance ✦ Why we’re gearing our homes for work and play

✦ Our need for a deeper sense of connection

✦ Making our home part of a greater community

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family. Home means so much to me. Even before I had children, I was one of those people that always had an extended family of friends. You’d make big Thanksgiving Day dinners and big events at Christmas. I tended to love gatherings – not parties necessarily, but celebrations of different kinds.’

More locally, Cape Town-based interior designer, Dee de Kock, 40, has a home in Tamboerskloof that she and husband Gerhard, 47, a chartered accountant, have spent a lot of energy on. ‘I’ve noticed

that people are definitely preferring to entertain and be at home more – and making a huge effort with decor no matter what their budgets are. Retailers have taken note – stores such as Woolworths are bringing home products to the public at an affordable price.

‘I enjoy every aspect of my house. I live on the slopes of Signal Hill with access to the mountain. I work from my office in Woodstock in the morning but I just can’t wait to pick up my eight-year-old son Nicholas after school and be at home in the afternoon. We’re always having friends over for braais or Sunday lunches – his as well as ours. It’s really a case of the more, the merrier.

‘I feel our generation spent the early part of our lives, especially our twenties, going out and it’s only now we’ve started nesting. We’ve come full circle. I also think we’ve got to a stage where we

truly value our friends. They’ve become on a par with family.’ Dr Dannerup backs this up, ’My experience is that it’s more the “chosen” family people want to reach, the individuals that they have selected to constitute their “family”, in lieu of the blood relatives that are either non-existent or too far away geographically or emotionally. That is the case with clients whose families have been decimated due to Aids, violence, extended exile, emigration or deep-seated political disagreements. Hiving isn’t just about loved

ones, but a whole redefinition of who one’s in-group is, towards a broader sense of inclusivity.’

Dr Dannerup says we’ve now tried all the quick fixes that money and a good doctor can buy, and realised that that still doesn’t make us happy or loved. ‘After initial despair, we’ve finally begun to turn towards a more spiritual, more connected, solution. We’ve realised it’s more constructive to create an environment in which friends and family know that they are welcome to drop in and be part of daily living. That’s especially when the environment has a wide selection of amenities, providing for many shared activities.

‘Currently, the communes in Europe are designed around a shared environment with a multitude of workstations for cooking, games, hobbies, home entertainment, shared work-from-home

‘We’ve realised it’s more constructive to create an environment in which friends can be part of daily living’

Artist Terry Kurgan and her friends are building a community of seven households on a plot in Parkview, Johannesburg

offices, a vegetable patch, laundry area, bar and clubroom, and private living areas with smaller kitchens/bathrooms/bit of garden for couple-time and alone-time. That provides the commune dwellers with enough space for the nuclear family to bond but also plenty of access to peers through meaningful shared activities that aren’t based in a consumer environment – such as our shopping malls.’

She says places like Dainfern in northern Johannesburg – enormous homes encircling a golf course – were designed to

accommodate ‘the need for extended hiving’. Greg agrees, ‘Dainfern is a self-sustaining village that you never have to leave.’

But artist and photographer Terry Kurgan and friends are planning something a little more intimate than the Tuscan-tiled enclave of Dainfern where you have no say as to who lives next door. They have bought a large plot in the more established Johannesburg suburb of Parkview. ‘There are seven households involved, including singles with kids, couples with no kids and couples with kids, and we’ve subdivided the plot we bought collectively into 500m2 each. We will share a garden and swimming pool.

‘We wanted to live in close proximity to friends without being in a conventional cluster – and we all wanted to build new houses. Each house will be completely different but we do have a building code – a palette of materials and qualities the homes will have in common. Many of us are also building our working spaces here, too – our home offices and studios. My studio, for example, will overlook my house. It’s not crime-driven or kid-driven, it’s just we’re all community minded and gregarious and suburban life can get lonely. It’s about living creatively and trying something different.’

Dr Dannerup certainly endorses the concept of ‘well-designed communal living with adequate alone-space’ for others. ‘I think it’ll help alleviate some of the soul-crushing loneliness that people experience. Even in what looks like successful marriages, people confess to experiencing a loneliness and sense of disconnect that goes with living in isolated homes.’

Singles are very much part of the trend and US researchers have identified a ‘desire for community’ even while living alone – a trend certainly evident in the many new loft apartment complexes around South Africa. John McIlwain of the Urban Land Institute in Washington, a non-profit research and education organisation told a US journalist recently there was a drive towards ‘walkability’. Singles, it seems, ‘want a place where they don’t have to get into a car to do everything. It’s in walking that they build community: they go to the same dry-cleaner, and get to know the people there. Same thing with their grocery store and their liquor store and all the places they visit regularly. And along the way you pass people, and even if you don’t know them personally, you develop a sense of community.’

Says Dee, ‘I think we’re all trying to get back to basics in some way. I’ve just bought a small holiday house – it’s about 10m2 – in the country town of Greyton. It’ll have no TV, lots of candles instead of lights and my easel and drawing materials.’

As Greg says, ‘There’s a detachment drive with regard to attachments. We’ve come to realise human interaction is more important than “things”. I think we are finally, as a society, pursuing happiness instead of just pleasure.’

‘We’ve realised it’s more constructive to create an environment in which friends can be part of daily living’

Interior decorator Dee de Kock loves her home on the slopes of Signal Hill in Cape Town and regularly has friends and family overPH

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