Project Details
- Designer: Collaborating Creatives Workshop
- Project Title: The Line
- Project Type: Residential
- Project Status: Design
- Land Size: 747 sqm
- Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Collaborating Creative Workshop (CCW) created a residential building design in Lagos, Nigeria. It made use of old building elements to solve design problems and produce a new and unique aesthetic. It’s a two-storey building with a pent floor that contains 3-bedroom units and 2-bedroom apartments on the pent floor.
Through this design, the designers wanted to create a comfortable and sustainable space that would transform an unfavourable site into a high-value, residential real estate. They achieved this with the use of old but functional building elements one of which is a breeze block.
Due to the shape and orientation of the site, the form is faced with the challenge of continuous heat gain from the sun throughout the day. CCW intervened by reusing breeze blocks in a modern context and created a pattern ‘outer curtain’ mimicking famous African patterns, which produces an amazing interplay of light and shadow in the interior spaces.
The peculiar size and shape of the land influenced the spatial organisation of the residential building design in Lagos. This caused all of the spaces to be arranged along the longer sides of the building exposing them to continuous solar radiation resulting in consistently hot spaces.
To solve this problem, CCW used breakout spaces and circulation areas as sun buffer zones for the main living spaces and placed them behind long glass curtain walls to allow indirect sunlight reflections.
To further enhance the effect of the buffer zones, breeze blocks were introduced as a final skin to allow a play of light and shadow in the interior spaces. The breeze blocks also enhanced the general aesthetic of the exterior.
One noteworthy aspect of this design is the intentional use of breeze blocks. The African-patterned cutouts on the breeze blocks contributed to the indigenous look of the exterior of this residential building design in Lagos. This, in addition to the roofing style, the colour palette of the exterior and the spiral staircase has modernized the exterior designs of the older buildings in the cityscape of Lagos.
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