Design & Architecture Atelier
SPANTONE
Design and Architecture Atelier.
Designing creative spaces from ordinary materials.
Dakar, Senegal.
Manifesto
We make great architecture from simple, honest materials — and let the craft create the value.
Brick, timber, earth and light. Drawn with discipline, detailed with patience, and shaped into buildings that belong to Dakar.
The Studio
A Dakar atelier that designs and builds.
Spantone works across housing, commercial and cultural projects — carrying each one from the first sketch through to a finished, occupied building. We hold the design and the delivery in the same hand, so intent survives all the way to the ground.
Based in
Dakar, Senegal
Practice
Design & Build
Materials
Brick · Timber · Earth
Fields
Housing · Commercial · Cultural
What We Believe
Three convictions.
Simple materials, considered detailing
Brick, timber and concrete are abundant and affordable. The architecture comes from how they are cut, stacked, perforated and joined — not from what they cost.
Outstanding value for our clients
We design and build, so every decision answers to the building’s long life — light, ventilation and durability before ornament.
A brand that resonates with culture
Claustra screens, courtyards and earthen colour are read as Senegalese, not imported. We are building a design language the city recognises as its own.
What We Do
Three ways we work.
One team, one studio, one workshop — working across the full life of a building.
Architecture & Design
Full architectural commissions and site supervision — homes, workplaces, hospitality and cultural spaces. From first sketch to handover.
Design & Build
Projects we design and deliver ourselves, keeping quality and intent in one pair of hands. A documented, transparent process from start to finish.
Space & Sound
Acoustic and immersive spatial design for venues, events and cultural spaces around Dakar. Design you hear as much as you see.
Selected Works
A language of brick, timber and light.
A glimpse of the work — the textures, screens and courtyards that shape how our buildings meet the sun.
— Selected studies and built work · Dakar, Senegal —
From the Carnets
Notes from the studio.
Five ideas we keep returning to — on sky, shade, water, the threshold and the quiet that holds a building together.
La Cour
The Courtyard
The West African house is built around a piece of sky. The rooms turn inward, toward a square of light planted with a tree. The courtyard is not a garden — it is the main room, the one without a roof.
L’Ombre
Shade
Under a frank sun, shade is the first thing held in common. Look up beneath a trellis: the sky arrives in blades. Shade that lets the breeze through is a climate; shade that stops it is only a shelter.
L’Eau
Water
Where there is water, people stop. It cools before any machine, slows the step, returns the sky. A bridge is not only a crossing — set on water, it becomes a collective balcony.
Le Seuil
The Threshold
The city happens in the thickness between inside and out. Three steps, an awning, a gallery: the threshold is where the private consents to become public. We thicken it, we cover it, we make it habitable.
Le Silence
Silence
Silence is not an absence. It is a material, and the rarest of them all. A calm building goes unnoticed: you speak lower in it, you think further. We build it by the section — the thickness of the walls, distance, water.
Philosophy
Humanist Modernism.
The efficiency of modern design, tempered by the hard realities of construction and the human experience of a space.
Contextual sensitivity
Site constraints — wind, the Dakar sun, topography — generate the form. The climate is the brief.
Iterative problem-solving
Rigorous testing of limits. Disciplined iteration replaces rigid attachment to the first idea.
Integrated systems
Thermal and acoustic systems are integrated from the first sketch, never added in post-production.
Clarity and communication
A design language that builders, clients and communities can all read and understand.
Get in touch
Let’s build.
Tell us about your site, your project or your idea. We reply by email.
arthur@spantone.comDakar · Senegal
