Plans for 28 luxury villas on the 'Island of Passion'

Engineers Glanville Consultants have won the contract for the structural design of a luxury development on a tiny private island in the Seychelles.

The scheme, which is on an island called Félicité and is known as "Island of Passion", includes restaurants, leisure facilities and 28 villas.

Each villa has a terrace with a glass-bottomed pool, which forms the roof of the living space below.

Project architect Tom Foster, from RHE Architecture & Design, said: “We want to create a new ‘stealth’ architecture that remains unseen from the surrounding islands, camouflaged by the site’s natural materials. The villas will merge into the landscape from the sea or air, with angled flank walls that mirror the ridges and angles of the existing rock.”

Nigel Porter, Glanville’s managing director, said: “We have worked with RHE on a similar project in Grenada. The building design is extremely imaginative and one of our key responsibilities will be to ensure that the structural design is in keeping with the demanding architectural concept and location.”

The Seychelles government opened up property ownership to foreigners about three years ago and the developer Per Aquum is one of the first to take advantage of the new ownership rules.