Gustav Roberts is a South African designer and founder of SALT Architects, a practice working across architecture with a concentrate on context-driven, materially grounded style. His work is formed by a close engagement with landscape, environment, and human experience, approaching each task as a reaction to place instead of an established official outcome. An essential developed work, Calling Academy High School in Stellenbosch, shows this approach through its integration with the surrounding winelands landscape and its usage of restrained, everyday materials to create spatial clearness and social worth. Roberts’ methodology emphasizes tectonic expression, natural products, and a balance between logical building and construction and a more poetic reading of the environment. Across his practice, he explores architecture as a peaceful mediator between people and location, aiming to produce spaces that are sustaining, purposeful, and closely connected to their context.
Aquifer Recharge Plant/ SALT Architects © Karl Rogers What influences you? Nature; human ordering of nature– the garden; the ever-present chance (of a location) to wish for an everlasting wholeness– perhaps it is the appeal of when humans enjoy one another; the odor of a workshop.
What inspired you to become an architect?
I was (and still am) very thinking about many topics. There is a lot marvel in discovering life and creation. Architecture, being so physical, is a discipline that perfectly manifests the wonders of life in physical form.
How would you explain your design philosophy?
I see architecture not as a predefined answer, however as a response that emerges from asking the best concerns. My work is rooted in a deep engagement with context– comprehending place, people, and function before form.I pursue a balance in between the logical and the poetic, recognizing that meaningful architecture exists in the space between function and experience. My approach is directed by 3 interconnected concerns: the natural, the human, and the transcendent. I see architecture as an arbitrator in between people and the environment, a provider of cultural significance, and a peaceful expression of something beyond the material.Each task is
approached as a singular response grounded in clear principles. I prioritize spatial richness, thoughtful materiality, and a tectonic clearness that exposes how a building is made. My objective is not to produce things of attention, but positions that belong– buildings that incorporate perfectly into every day life while providing depth, environment, and a sense of continuity.Ultimately, I seek an architecture of quiet significance– grounded in context, formed by human experience, and open up to suggesting beyond itself.< img width ="1140" height ="760"src="// www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20width='1140'%20height='760'%20viewBox='0%200%201140%20760'%3E%3C/svg%3E"alt="Image 2" data-src="https://www.architecturelab.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-2-1140x760.png"/ >
Aquifer Recharge Plant/ SALT Architects © Karl Rogers What is your preferred project? The latest one we are hectic with. Currently, that is the New Pinnacle Pinelands School.
What is your preferred detail?
An extremely simple way of using a pre-stressed concrete lintel centred in a cavity brick wall to avoid joints in the plasterwork on the façade, and likewise producing a recessed information at the top of the opening.
< img width ="1500"height
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I find extremely processed materials like metal cladding systems, which are respected in wealthier contexts, typically tough to accept. What is
your procedure for beginning a new job? The primary step is constantly to develop a vision of the location in my creativity that excites me about what appeal, delight, and goodness it can potentially give the users. How do you fuel your imagination? Creativity for me is like an endurance sport. You need the grit to press through pain for long periods. The suffering now becomes part of the pleasure later, therefore, like a marathon runner, we come to take pleasure in the fatiguing procedure. That does not quite answer the concern, so virtually it is with excessive coffee and loud Beethoven or Bach.
What motivated the Calling Academy Stellenbosch?
Calling Academy High School in Stellenbosch was very first inspired by the agrarian winelands landscape. Set within a rural winelands landscape with a mountainous horizon, the threshold area between inside and outside ended up being the primary space, triggering the external foyer location behind the cinder block screen, with the screen becoming the conciliator in between male and nature.
Interview with Gustav Roberts of SALT Architects 9 Interview with Gustav Roberts of SALT Architects 10 Calling Academy Stellenbosch/ SALT Architects © SALT Architects
How did materiality shape the Calling Academy Stellenbosch?
The spending plan was exceptionally low, which provided us the chance to utilize daily products (particularly everyday for students from a low-income area) in a specific and for that reason lovely method. It shows to the users that chance and achievement are not limited to monetary worth, which has an extensive influence on the learners.
What recommendations would you give to young architects?
Make things physically with your hands, in the real life, so that you establish a sensation of how materials act. How heavy a steel beam is, how long a piece of wood flexes when you select it up and splinters when you cut it, how tough it is to drill a hole in a concrete wall, and so on.