Office: SAOTA | ArchDaily

Villa Lyla / SAOTA

Hadir Al Koshta — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Villa Lyla is a private estate that explores proportion, layered forms, and a grounded relationship to its landscape within a tropical setting. Situated on the island of Nassau, the home presents a peaceful retreat on the canal water's edge — a contemplative environment that balances formal rigour with a relaxed, climate-conscious approach to living. Set among lush gardens, with a large infinity pool and offering direct access to a boat dock, the residence is closely attuned to both its natural and nautical surroundings.

Flanders House / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 03:00:00 +0000

This house on a large, wooded lot in the Flanders region of Belgium offered SAOTA an opportunity to design a distinctive contemporary architectural object in the landscape that would simultaneously serve as a warm, outward-looking living environment and engage meaningfully with its surroundings.

Winelands Villa / ARRCC + SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 02:00:00 +0000

Winelands Villa is situated in the Gentleman’s Estate at Val de Vie Estate in the Paarl-Franschhoek Valley, a luxury smallholding concept along the banks of the Berg River offering views of the Drakenstein, Simonsberg and Paarl Rock Mountains within a landscape of rehabilitated fynbos. The estate’s aesthetic guidelines specify a contemporary interpretation of Provençal and Cape vernacular architecture, prescribing pitched roofs, exposed timber rafters, and a material palette of timber cladding, off-shutter concrete, and natural stonework offset with white plastered walls.

Stradella Ridge House / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 02:00:00 +0000

Cape Town's SAOTA, alongside US architect developer David Maman and Belgian interior designer Dieter Vander Velpen, designed this Bel Air residence, perched on a steep, triangular site with striking canyon views extending from Century City to the ocean.

Upper Albert Residence / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 02:00:00 +0000

Architect Philip Olmesdahl, principal at Cape Town-based studio SAOTA, had been living near this site in the city bowl for more than 15 years, admiring it, before he managed to secure it for himself. The timing, however, was perfect. “We needed a more spacious home for my family when the children got into their teenage years,” he says. Being his own client offered Philip the opportunity to push boundaries – combining wisdom earned designing houses with SAOTA over the years with something a bit more whimsical and experimental. “When architects design their own homes,” he says, “they can have a bit more fun; they can be a little bit less intellectual.” That doesn’t mean that the design of his own home is any less rigorously thought-out, but rather that Philip could take the opportunity to explore architectural ideas without necessarily feeling the need to present a definitive statement or conclusive theory and weave in personal associations and preferences.

Glyfada Residence / SAOTA + ARRCC

Hana Abdel — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 20:00:00 +0000

This five-unit seafront apartment building, designed by SAOTA with interior architecture by ARRCC, is located in the southern suburbs of Athens at the gateway to the Athens Riviera. It overlooks the beach and the Aegean Sea with views towards Aegina and the distant hills of Poros, while the Hymettus Mountain rises behind it. The building occupies a corner site on the frontline of the promenade overlooking one of the local beaches. It comprises four apartments located on either side of a triple-volume arrival hall, which provides access to landscaped gardens with twin swimming pools to the front. A double-level penthouse spans the width of the podium on the upper level, set back from the building’s edge.

Bellgave Residence / SAOTA

Bianca Valentina Roșescu — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 18:00:00 +0000

Bellgave, a private residence in Los Angeles, is situated above Laurel Canyon Boulevard on a cul-de-sac in the Hollywood Hills. With its elevated position at the edge of a steep promontory, the site offers unobstructed panoramic views from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. Its north-south orientation aligns with the grid of the city basin below, and the tone for its architectural context is set by mid-century landmarks such as Pierre Koenig’s landmark Stahl House (Case Study House No. 22), which can be glimpsed on a nearby promontory to the west.

Clifton Terraces Apartments / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 22:00:00 +0000

Clifton Terraces apartments on Victoria Road, Cape Town, designed by SAOTA, makes a striking but sensitively integrated architectural statement in the area’s distinctive cliffside setting. The development recedes from the street in a series of stepped, articulated terraces that follow the site's natural contours, boasting panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean and local landmarks such as Table Mountain and Clifton’s series of sheltered beaches.

Silver Pine Residence / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Tue, 25 May 2021 22:00:00 +0000

In the Russian Capital of Moscow, this contemporary home, set among the pine woods on an island in the Moskva River, introduces a revolutionary outward-looking approach to the city's architectural tradition. Designed by SAOTA, a South African architecture studio known for advancing the possibilities of 20th-century modernism, this home represents the tradition of the terrace, with its emphasis on an outdoor orientation, but in a context and climatic condition vastly different from the origin of the type.

Terracina / SAOTA

Andreas Luco — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 20:00:00 +0000

The character of this four-bedroom family home in Miami, South Florida, designed by SAOTA, arose largely through an engaged creative response to its distinctive setting. The house is located on a pie-shaped lot in the city of Golden Beach, an affluent and exclusive small municipality on a narrow strip of land between the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Intracoastal Waterway to the west.

Buffelsdrift Farm / SAOTA + Jaco Booyens Architect

Hana Abdel — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 21:00:00 +0000

The restoration of the ensemble of heritage buildings on Buffelsdrift, west of Ladismith in the arid Klein Karoo region of the Western Cape, by SAOTA and Jaco Booyens Architect, a specialist in clay buildings, recently won the gold medal at the seventh edition (2019) of the international Domus Restoration and Conservation Award (www.premiorestauro.it) in Italy. The award recognises “excellence in the field of restoration, redevelopment and architectural and landscape recovery at an international level”.

Kingsway Tower / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 20:00:00 +0000

Kingsway Tower in Ikoyi, Lagos, Nigeria is a landmark mixed-use building set on a prominent corner on Alfred Rewane Road, an arterial road that bisects the city leading north towards the airport and south to the Victoria Island. Designed by South African architects SAOTA, Kingsway Tower is 15 storeys high. It has a basement, a two-level retail podium, a parking podium and 12 office floor levels. Not only does the design of Kingsway Tower introduce new architectural ideas to Lagos – the economic centre of Nigeria and one of the fastest growing cities in the world – but it is also uncompromisingly world-class in its quality and execution, reflecting the importance of this emerging market in a global context.

Lake Huron House / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Wed, 27 May 2020 23:00:00 +0000

This summer house is set on the banks of Lake Huron in a small, remote Canadian town about an hour’s drive from London, Ontario. While the architectural context might be characterised as somewhat conservative “cabin country”, this house attempts to extend the possibilities of the traditional lakeside family retreat through a contemporary architectural approach, harnessing recent developments in design, technology and sustainability to connect meaningfully with its beautiful natural setting while exploring new ways of enhancing the lifestyle experience of the family summer getaway.

Hillside House / SAOTA

Valeria Silva — Mon, 04 May 2020 21:00:00 +0000

SAOTA’s Hillside home in Los Angles is located immediately above Sunset Boulevard on a promontory just one over from Pierre Koenig’s landmark Stahl House. The site is a 20 000 square foot estate, featuring 300-degree views over the LA skyline and the city basin below, and the design was conceived of more as a self-contained oasis rather than a conventional house. The Stahl House served as a key point of departure. The forms and articulation of Hillside’s roof planes, which were pushed as far forward as possible so that they could create meaningful external covered living spaces, set its architecture in dialogue with the iconic silhouette nearby and connect it to the drama of its context.

Lake House / ARRCC + SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 19:00:00 +0000

This family home and office on the banks of Lake Geneva, with architecture by SAOTA and interiors by ARRCC, was designed for a successful Senegalese businessman based in Switzerland. The home draws on the owner’s heritage to advance an emerging African‐inspired aesthetic in its sculptural form, materiality, and textural quality. The triangular shape of the dramatically located lakeside site, in addition to strict planning parameters and prohibitions, imposed considerable restrictions on the design. The response was to carve architectural forms from the triangular footprint of the site and to create a ‘reductive’ sculptural design of round‐edged cubes and triangular masses.

Villa Courbe / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Just as its alpine setting has been formed by many forces over time, Villa Courbe is a residence shaped intuitively and alliteratively by many hands – from sun and topography to brief and local zoning regulations. Seen from the water, the house appears almost at one with the wooded hills that rise gently out of the lake and, at the same time, very different to the traditional suburbia that surrounds it. The need to respond to the topography that came before, drives the design to contrast with the neighboring houses that appeared only after the glaciers and ice had done their work.

Kirsch Pharma HealthCare Building / SAOTA

Hana Abdel — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 21:00:00 +0000

In their design for the new head office and production site for Kirsch Pharma HealthCare GmbH in Wedemark, Germany, SAOTA rethinks the often underwhelming and generic industrial prototype. The site of German‐based Kirsch Pharma HealthCare’s new factory and headquarters in Wedemark, Germany, is a somewhat anonymous industrial zone without distinctive contextual cues. South African‐based architectural firm SAOTA approached the project with the understanding that a meaningful architectural response to this environment would require a building that stood as a sculptural object in the landscape, making a strong architectural statement that imparted a sense of presence and identity in its own right.

Le Pine House / SAOTA

Daniel Tapia — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 17:00:00 +0000

This family summer house in Saint Tropez, France designed by SAOTA, is a contemporary interpretation of traditional Mediterranean Riviera architecture. Free from the constraints of the historical vernacular, the project became an opportunity to advance the expression of form, space, and lifestyle associated with the location. The long, narrow site backs onto a glade of pine trees to the south. “When we first went onto the site, we found it lovely that you could look up into the pine forest and experience those amazing volumes under the canopies of the pines,” says SAOTA Director Stefan Antoni. “That became an important cue when we developed the design.”