Inspired by the heady, futuristic aesthetic of '60s and '70s L.A. Modernism, this Clifton home injects some of the era's glamour and poolside party lifestyle into the present-day
High up on Cape Town’s gorgeous Nettleton Ridge, hugging the craggy Cape mountainside and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, is a vision that might make you think for a moment that you’d entered a parallel universe. You could be looking at Tony Stark’s Malibu mansion from the Iron Man franchise, or a Bond villain’s lair, or even something out of The Jetsons.
You wouldn’t be far off—this Clifton house, belonging to mining banker Lloyd Pengilly and designed with crucial input from his son Hanno—has its roots in the same US west-coast architecture that inspired all of these cinematic fantasies, particularly the work of John Lautner.
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Perhaps the most famous of Lautner’s designs is the Elrod House in Palm Springs, which appeared in James Bond’s Diamonds Are Forever. Another, the Sheats Goldstein House, pops up in The Big Lebowski. They’re LA party pads, rising organically from their rocky mountainsides, their interiors fusing with their vast views: part stone sculpture, part flying machine.
This Cape Town house has a similar sculptural presence, at once futuristic and primal. Its swooping curves and waving contours evoke the jet-set era: a time when airports and flight were glamourous and romantic, when space travel had captured the world’s imagination, and when cars spelled freedom. It was a time when technological advancement and style crystallised and found expression in an aesthetic that was filled with optimism, daring and a sense of possibility.