‘Hophuis’ refers simultaneously to two things: firstly, the Afrikaans translation of the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) house, a major spatial project by the newly elected ANC government in 1994; and secondly, it refers to the South African Hop - a dance performed by emancipated enslaved people and which was captured in a 1833 drawing at the Cape of Good Hope. This publication reveals the particularities of a modernist building in the town of Steinkopf, situated in the Namaqualand desert.