Bellgave is a beautiful modernist villa in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles, California, designed by SAOTA in 2022.

Description
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.
Cape Town-based architects SAOTA engaged with the modernist precedent set by the Stahl House and other ground-breaking Los Angeles Case Study Houses in the design of Bellgave, reprising and advancing some of their pioneering innovations that forged the distinctive indoor-outdoor lifestyle that became synonymous with the city itself, and a distinctive, climatically appropriate regional modernism. By raising a platform on pillars and caissons, the architects lifted the house towards the view and established a series of intersecting and overlapping horizontal planes that project outwards from the cliff edge. The horizontal emphasis of the terraces and oversailing eaves reflect the city?s wide horizons, with a sense of volume and compression that responds to its distinctive ch...