Bo-Kaap Corner (Cape Town)

This is a model built as a representative corner of the historic Malay area of Cape Town called the Bo-Kaap. The architecture of the buildings is deceptively simple, but very distinctive. The area has a wonderful urban feel in spite of the buildings being only 1-2 stories high.

I built this model for my twin boys, so there started to be a storey attached to it:

Fatima runs the spice and ice-cream shop on the corner, her Malay spice ice-cream is famous around the world and people make a point of visiting her shop when they are in Cape Town. Her cinnamon and cardamom is her top seller. Her daughter (Ayeesa), unfortunately does not like working in the shop and prefers her skateboard.

Around the corner, Salie is delivering fish with his cart and horse. His family has been in the fish business for three generations. His Uncle lives in Hout Bay and fishes every day. Salie delivers the fresh fish and seafood in the same manner as his father and grandfather before him, but is worried that there is less and less interest in deliveries as more of the original residents sell their houses and they are bought up by young professionals. Two of these new residents can be seen walking their dogs and having a chat in front of the blue and yellow houses.

Oom Piet and Khadeeja have been living next door to each other for 30 years. Both their sposes recently passed away. They seem to spend most of their spare time chatting to each other on their respective front stoeps (verandas), rumour has it that there is romance in the air....

I built this model using my block resources available in our collection, so some of the colours should be refined.