Villa Zilveli

The Villa Zilveli stands as a radical experiment in modernist architecture, originally designed in nineteen thirty-three by the Austrian architect Jean Welz. Built into the hillside of the Butte Bergeyre on a narrow plot of land, the structure was famously set upon slender reinforced concrete stilts to elevate it above the street and capture expansive views of Paris. It was commissioned by a Greek engineer named Athanase Zilveli as a birthday gift for his wife. The building incorporated daring design choices like exposed concrete that displayed the texture of its wooden construction forms, a technique that would not become mainstream in modernist architecture for another fifteen years.