Architectural designer · Johannesburg
Homes that
hold a life well.
Claire Cardwell creates beautiful, functional homes—and helps make the complicated business of plans and approvals feel clear.
Claire Cardwell / Blue Designs
Good design is not a style.
It is a better way to live.
With more than two decades in residential architecture, Claire combines a practical eye, an instinct for character and direct experience of Johannesburg’s planning environment. Blue Designs is the established practice behind her work; today, Claire works and submits under her own name.
Meet Claire & her practice →What Claire does
From first line
to final approval.
New homes
Original, practical residential design centred on the way a family wants to live.
↗Alterations
Thoughtful additions and modernisation that make an existing home work harder.
↗Heritage homes
Measured change that respects the character and fabric worth keeping.
↗Approvals
Building plans, as-built drawings and guidance through municipal approval pathways.
↗Selected work
Built around
real lives.
New homes, sensitive alterations and the patient work of bringing existing buildings into alignment.
The Naked Architect
Architecture, explained without the mystique.
Claire writes about planning, construction, sustainable building, heritage and the buildings that make us look twice.
Read the journal ↗Have a project in mind?