Straight lines are at a minimum in this grotto-style Jacques Couëlle home, which sits surrounded by palm trees in Provence’s Mouans-Sartoux.
The four-bedroom property – which is on the market for €2.4m with Espaces Atypiques – follows Couëlle’s architecture-sculpture style, featuring white walls that seem to have been roughly hewn from stone.
It’s one of five ‘landscape houses’ designed by Couëlle, all of which used rounded forms designed to resemble natural shapes, often resembling grottoes or traditional cave houses. The architect believed that harsh lines and right angles ‘provoked human anxiety’.
Inside, curved ceilings, arches and an open fireplace have been left purposefully irregular, and are contrasted by details also designed by the self-taught architect – including a bronze mural that conceals doors to the kitchen and cellar.
A deep-set porthole-style window offers views across the nearby bay, while other windows are set behind clefts in the house’s exterior, or feature decorative geometric steel coverings.
White walls are contrasted by wooden doors, a terracotta staircase, and a brightly coloured harlequin-style tiled floor in one of the bedrooms.
The Provence property – which was designed in 1962 and is labeled as Heritage of the 20th Century – also features a swimming pool and outdoor covered terrace. It’s a ten minute drive from nearby Cannes.
Read next: Stay in a cave house in Spain’s Sierra Morena mountains