July 4, 2026
Architect and Builder featured Dolce Vita in its Q2 2026 issue. The recognition is for the building itself: how it was designed, how it was built, and how it meets the street in Sea Point. It is a publication we have read for years, written for and by people who build for a living, so being recognised in its pages means a great deal to us. We wanted to set out what the feature covered, and why the decisions it describes are the ones we care about.
A development on the Atlantic Seaboard should add to the street it stands on rather than turn its back on it. That decision, more than any single finish, is what tends to make a building worth returning to years after the sale. Dolce Vita was developed on that principle, and it is the principle the feature keeps returning to.
Dolce Vita stands on the corner of Regent Road and Church Road in Sea Point. It is a mixed-use development of roughly 65 apartments, ranging from compact studios to three-bedroom residences, alongside a boutique hotel, The Cole, operated by the Kove Collection. Retail, hospitality, and dining occupy the ground floor. Private homes on one side, a hotel on the other, and a public edge that belongs to the neighbourhood: that mix is the whole idea of the building, not a set of separate parts stacked on one site.
Dolce Vita was designed by Robert Silke & Partners. The site is a difficult one. It sits between two very different neighbours: the contemporary Flamingo building, also by Silke's office, and Mimosa Court, a mid-century block by the Italian architect Loris Pagano. Rather than copy either, the design works as a bridge between them, contemporary in its own right while staying aware of the Atlantic Seaboard's architectural history. The language draws on Tropical Modernism and Mediterranean coastal urbanism, with echoes of Rio de Janeiro's beachfront blocks and Sea Point's own post-war apartment era.
The design decision the feature singles out is orientation. Much of the site sits behind Beach Road, away from the water. To answer that, many of the hotel rooms were turned towards the Atlantic and over the low roofline of the neighbouring La Perla, drawing sea views from a position that is not, strictly, on the seafront. Architect and Builder reads this as proof that perception and spatial experience can be worth as much as geography. We would put it more plainly: the view was designed, not inherited, and that takes work.
A building of this shape is a construction problem before it is anything else. The curves, terraces, and layered balconies that give Dolce Vita its character are hard to build, and that difficulty is the point. It was delivered with R+N Master Builders, one of Cape Town's longest-standing construction firms, with roots dating to 1948. We have worked with R+N across projects over the years, and complexity like this is exactly where that kind of relationship earns its keep. Saul is on the ground through construction; the standard is set with him standing there.
Many developments at this level retreat from the city around them. Dolce Vita does the opposite. Its ground floor is active: retail, and three hospitality spaces that draw residents, guests, and locals alike. Arlecchino, at street level, was developed by the Tashas Group and takes its cues from 1970s Italian dining. Script, the hotel's cocktail bar, and Figo, its rooftop restaurant, extend that into the building's upper and public levels. None of them functions as a private amenity walled off from the pavement. They are part of Sea Point's social life.
This is the part of the design we are most deliberate about. A development can hold its value and still give something back to the street it stands on. Architect and Builder read Dolce Vita as a building that engages Sea Point rather than closing itself off, offering one of the strongest urban edges of any recent development along that strip. That reading is the one we would have asked for.
We have been developing on the Atlantic Seaboard for more than 30 years, and the approach has not changed much across them. Saul is hands-on through the build. Paul meets almost every buyer and hands the apartments over in person. The buildings we are proud of are the ones that still make sense a decade after we hand them over, and that hold their place in the neighbourhood rather than standing apart from it.
A building like this is never the work of one hand. We are grateful to Architect and Builder for the feature, and to Robert Silke & Partners, R+N Master Builders, and the wider team who built it with us. A feature like this does not change how the next building gets made, but it is a marker we value: independent confirmation from people who look at buildings closely that a considered, well-built development reads as exactly that.
Dolce Vita is complete and occupied. To see more of the development, or to talk to us about what we are building next,
Photography by Paris Brummer
