For most architects, heritage lives in the portfolio. For Bettina Woodward, it’s woven into her daily life. As principal architect at Open City Architects, she has become one of South Africa’s leading voices on heritage-led design. In this conversation, she reflects on Rowan Lane, the balance between preservation and reinvention, and the lessons appreciating heritage holds for the next generation.
Rowan Lane is both an architectural icon and your family home. How has living in a heritage landmark influenced your practice as an architect?
It’s an extraordinary feeling to live in a house that is so carefully conceived. I find myself constantly marvelling at the clever details. I’m always trying to understand the underlying principles that make a building truly great, but in this case, I also get to experience firsthand how effortlessly it supports everyday life. For me, that reinforces the idea that architecture must transcend style — it’s about proportion, rhythm, generosity, and how life unfolds within space. That is the lesson I carry into every project.
When you first stepped into No. 5 Rowan Lane, you described an emotional response. What continues to move you about it?
Architecture like that is so deeply attuned to both its natural surroundings and human experience, is rare. That’s why people, myself included, respond so viscerally when they step into the home. The curved, glazed courtyard, with the beautiful maple tree at its centre, is the first thing you see as you enter. The fine steel columns create a striking rhythm from which the rest of the house flows effortlessly outward.
Rowan Lane opens onto the street, unlike today’s security-driven designs. How do you view the tension between heritage openness and modern fears?
In South Africa, we’ve become conditioned to close ourselves off, to protect first and connect second. Rowan Lane flips that, the front doors open directly onto the street, and the lane itself is a communal space where children play. It demonstrates trust and reciprocity. While we can’t ignore today’s realities, I believe we can design thresholds that ensure safety while keeping connection possible. The more we connect, the safer our streets will be.
The Rowan Lane houses were designed around mature trees — a radical move at the time. How does this sensitivity to landscape inform your design approach today?
At Open City, we always begin with detailed site surveys, mapping trees, topography, and views so the design can grow out of what exists. This approach ensures the building feels anchored and enhances the experience of place rather than imposing on it. It’s our responsibility to be sensitive to the environment. For us, preservation and reinvention are part of the same continuum. It is about distilling what is essential in a heritage building, whether that is the proportions, the atmosphere, or the significant features that define its character, and then allowing new layers to emerge without erasing those qualities.
The architecture on Rowan Lane carries influences from global industry names, including Le Corbusier, Aldo van Eyck, and Pancho Guedes. Do you see South African heritage fitting into, or resisting these global narratives?
The dominance of social media and the instant spread of information make it more important than ever to understand what is unique about the places we build in. Global design trends tend to produce a sense of sameness, which I find disheartening. My generation of architects was trained to value the modern movement while also thinking locally, particularly through the lens of critical regionalism. South Africa has an extraordinarily rich history, with many different traditions of building. The more we draw from and explore these unique qualities, the more meaningful and distinctive our local architecture can become.
How does the experience of raising a family in a heritage home differ from living in something you designed yourself?
I have been able to experience the house as a gift, discovering its layers and quirks alongside my family. It has shaped our family life in ways I could never have predicted. My children are growing up with an intuitive understanding of scale, light, and proportion. Designing for myself is challenging; it is almost impossible to make decisions!
Your recent work with Open City shows a deep continuity with heritage principles, but in new contexts. Could you share some of your recent projects or ideas in progress?
We’ve worked on historical farms, preserving heritage while creating immersive visitor experiences. In the Bo-Kaap, we designed a mixed-use precinct that respects the scale, rhythm and character of the street. For us, the joy is in contributing to a place without diminishing its original identity.
The Soetmelksvlei Museum Project, which you led, has been described as ‘stepping back into a 19th-century farmyard.’ What were the biggest challenges and inspirations in bringing this immersive heritage experience to life?
The challenge with the Soetmelksvlei project was to create an authentic experience without being nostalgic. Visitors are invited to connect with the grit and reality of 19th-century farm life, the textures, imperfections, and rhythm of daily work, rather than a polished museum set piece. The design draws inspiration from the farm itself and extensive research into how people lived and worked, combining adaptive re-use of historical buildings with new structures that support the expanded programme. The result is a tactile and spatial journey that preserves the farm’s heritage while allowing visitors to experience it as a living, immersive environment.
Do you feel there’s enough recognition and protection for South Africa’s late modernist and brutalist heritage — or are we at risk of losing this period of architecture?
We are very much at risk. Too often, late modernist and brutalist buildings are lost, when in fact they represent some of the boldest and most civic-minded architecture of the 20th century in South Africa. They deserve the same recognition and protection as our earlier heritage. If we lose them, we lose an essential chapter of our cultural story.
Looking ahead, what does “heritage” mean for you: a style, a memory, or a lived continuum?
Heritage is never neutral. It is not just a style to admire or a past to remember—it is a living, often challenging dialogue with what came before. Some of it is beautiful, painful, even politically charged, yet it shapes how we live today. Engaging with heritage means facing its contradictions, learning from them, and letting them guide what we create next. When old buildings are given new life through fresh uses, something meaningful and unexpected can emerge. It takes care and skill to preserve the character of these buildings while adapting them for the present.
