Stephen Antoine, founder of the South African architecture firm SAOTA, likes to tell a story from the time the company’s Cape Town office was built. The roof was being pulled in place when he felt that part of the view of Table Mountain would be cut off. Work stopped. The entire terrace was redesigned so that the city’s iconic flat-topped mountains remain unobstructed. “It was important to capture that scene,” Antoine said. “If you hadn’t, you would have made a big mistake.”
The anecdote reflects Antoine’s ethos, welcoming nature’s grandeur in equally opulent homes. These are buildings that, through clever use of space and framing, can make you feel like you have an entire mountain, a stretch of ocean, or an entire city. No wonder he set real estate records.
Its clients pop up in groups in South Africa and the US, but also the likes of Russia, Indonesia and Nigeria, testing SAOTA’s expertise in a variety of contexts. McMansions, it’s definitely not: a SAOTA-designed home on Ocean View Drive in Bantry Bay, Cape Town, sold in 2016 for 290 million rand ($20.2 million at the time), reportedly in Africa was to be sold. Has become the most expensive private house ever. “We try to convey to our customers that good design is of great importance,” said Antoine.
Now, after more than 30 years in business, the firm has produced its first book, “Light, Space, Life,” which showcases some of its most memorable designs. “(The purpose of the book is) to capture a mindset; an idea up to a certain point,” said Antoine, who also described it as a “springboard” for new ideas. So where could a South African firm go from here?
Structural gymnastics at the bottom of Africa
Antony began his business in the mid-1980s, when apartheid and cultural exclusion meant that South Africa was largely cut off from the world. He says that his firm rode the wave of a “mini-renaissance” in the post-apartheid creative boom, but remained in many ways on the periphery of Cape Town architecture, “on one end of the world, looking down.” of Africa.”
“You are very aware that you are not at the center of the universe,” said Antoine, “and if you want to make any kind of impact, you have to do something exceptionally well.”
Cape Town, with its distinctive topography, sandwiched between mountain and sea, and surrounded by two distinct seasonal winds, serves as an incubator for the beauty of SAOTA.
A photo of Stephen Antoine’s own SAOTA-designed home in Cape Town. Credit: Adam Leach
Dr Philip Tumubweni, an academic at the University of Cape Town’s School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, says that SAOTA brought an innovative approach to the country’s architecture. “It is structural gymnastics. It is a very tall cantilever, solid and clean space – which is not necessarily a new aesthetic, but in the South African context, it was relatively new,” she explained.
Cape Town’s sloping Atlantic seaboard, where several SAOTA projects began, also served as a shop window. “It’s quite visible,” said Antoine. “People can (a) see the house, which works in our favor. Because if you design something interesting or beautiful, people notice.”
When global markets crashed in 2008, work slowed down in South Africa, only for SAOTA to start taking commissions from around the world. By 2012 it had designed its first commission in Miami, Florida, a home on the Venice Causeway designed to feel like the deck of a superyacht, recalled Mark Bullivent, a principal architect at SAOTA.
View of “Dilido”, a Sota-designed home in Miami that was a success for the company in North America. Credit: Adam Leach
“It was this project that really set everything on its path for us,” he said. SAOTA further worked in Florida with New York, California, Colorado and Texas.
Bullivent said places with a Mediterranean climate — Los Angeles, for example — are a natural fit to export the “Cape Town building,” while others, like the Middle East, require a different approach.
“We always say that our goal is to design a building that looks like it’s always there,” he explained. For example, in Bali, Sota used local black and citrate stone instead of concrete, and an upcoming project in Phoenix, Arizona, on the slopes of Camelback Mountain, will use earth walls “to create a connection site”.
“There is a fundamental cultural aspect of how people live in different places,” Bullivent said. “But at the same time, from a sustainable standpoint, we want to use as many local materials as possible (as much as possible).”
designing for the one percent
Today SAOTA has 300 employees, working closely with architects from around the world to make their projects come true.
Tumubweni believes that SAOTA’s focus on the early stages of concept development and design development, rather than the manufacturing process, is the key to its success. “on the surface[it]It feels strange to do so, because as the architect, you want to have control over the final product. But it means they can do a lot of projects at the same time without having an unreliable staff,” she explained.
“They disrupted professional practice in the country,” she said.
Among SAOTA’s upcoming projects is this home in Phoenix, Arizona, inspired by American architects Rick Joy and Wendell Burnett, said architect Mark Bullivent. Credit: Courtesy Saota
Back in Cape Town, a city of economic contradictions and unhygienic living conditions, Tumubweni said SAOTA’s ultra-high-end projects have not been without criticism. “But,” she added, “although the criticism is valid – and I agree with that criticism – at some point, especially with architectural practice, there has to be a space in which people can pursue the practice.” It’s “the one percent,” she said, “that innovation can afford, what (the architect) can afford to experiment.”
Antoine stressed that he is more interested in the value owners place on their SOTA homes than their financial value.
“The customers say, ‘You’ve ruined our lives,'” Antoine said with a smile, “‘we go on vacations now and we don’t enjoy them as much anymore – we want to go back home.’ “
“In a way, that kind of explains it,” he said. “A house or house is not just a functional living space, it must have emotional qualities… It should be a place where you can fulfill all your dreams and all your aspirations.”