AD100 2026 Architect, designer and curator Chacha Atallah invites AD on a tour of her sunlit Tunisia villa inspired by fond childhood memories.
"When I was very young – maybe four or five – I would come to Carthage with my father, just near the Baths of Antoninus. He had a small boat, so we’d go fishing together, and I think that’s the best souvenir of my life: being out at sea with all of Carthage in front of me,” remembers architect Chacha Atallah.
Carthage, an ancient Tunisian city founded by the Phoenicians and later rebuilt by the Romans, now sits within a suburb of modern-day Tunis, and is home to UNESCO-protected archaeological sites. While its history carries weight, it is the city’s nostalgic pull, serene stillness and proximity to the sea that Atallah cherishes most. Serendipitously, after a five-year search for the perfect Tunisia villa, she found herself back in the very place that had shaped her earliest memories.
“When we saw this house, it was quite ugly, the garden was awful, and it sat at the dead end of the street, but my husband and I sensed a hidden charm, and the area was just so peaceful. So we decided to take it,” Atallah recalls. Built in 1962 on 500 square metres of land, the home was characterised by its midcentury architecture, which the designer vowed to keep.
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Driving up to the front door now, a halo of bougainvillea frames the entrance as you step into the sunlit villa, its whitewashed façade shaded by low-hung, retractable yellow awnings. With Atallah’s contextual approach to architecture, it’s no surprise that her own home fully embraces the spirit of the Mediterranean.
Even in its derelict state, the house immediately reminded Atallah of Royan, the French seaside town rebuilt after World War Two. Its architecture echoed the Modernist principles shaped by Le Corbusier – living with the sun and the wind, and adapting form to climate and landscape. “I saw potential in the architecture,” she says, noting how she preserved key elements such as the terraces, which are shielded by screens from the harsh sunlight. As the building faces south, she introduced multiple layers of shading and light control, all while ensuring the family could move fluidly between indoors and out. “We wanted to live in a space that gave us the consistent feeling of being outside,” she explains.
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Atallah removed all the interior walls to create a generous, open volume that spills out towards a David Hockney-esque pool and a lush garden filled with trailing greenery and pastel flowers. A sculptural cactus garden occupies the brightest corner, and trees bear oranges, olives and avocados so big they cause earth-shattering thumps as they fall off the branches.
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Inside this Tunisia villa, the existing columns became architectural tools: defining thresholds, dividing rooms, or cleverly doubling as storage. Mahogany, sourced from across Africa, wraps the interiors in rich, varied tones marked by age and patina, extending from the living areas and open library staircase on the ground floor to the bedrooms above. “I like the way the wood reacts with the sunlight,” Atallah says.
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Art takes pride of place in the home, much of it collected since 2011, when Atallah first returned to Tunis – a mix of works by Tunisian artists and pieces gathered over the years by her husband, an avid collector himself. At the entrance hangs a painting by veteran Tunisian artist Hamadi Ben Saad, discovered in an antiques shop in the city. “This painting is very rare, because in Ben Saad’s work it’s almost impossible to find a shade of black like this,” Atallah notes. Throughout the house, canvases and sculptures sit alongside iconic designs by the likes of Mies van der Rohe, and lovingly restored vintage finds.
In a separate wing of the house, Atallah designed her studio – a glass-clad pavilion overlooking the garden, allowing her to move effortlessly between work and home. “We feel that even though the space isn’t very big, the constant connection to nature and light makes every day feel different. That’s what keeps it interesting,” Atallah says. “I feel at peace in this house." @chacha_atallah_slowedition
