Category: West Africa — Senegal

Project Overview

This series of renders captures Dakar after dark — a city that transforms under artificial light into something altogether different from its daytime self. The project is less a conventional architectural commission and more a speculative urban study: an investigation of how brand identity, commercial signage, and contemporary architectural facades combine to produce a distinctly West African urban aesthetic. The Dakar brandscape is energetic, layered, and deeply human in scale.

Design Philosophy

The project takes its conceptual cue from the theory of the brandscape — the idea that the built environment of a commercial city is inseparable from the visual language of the brands that inhabit it. In Dakar, this manifests in a particular way: international luxury brands and local artisan identities coexist on the same streetscape, their signage competing and collaborating in equal measure. At night, the hierarchy of the daytime city dissolves, and what remains is a field of light, colour, and text.

Architecturally, the project explores how building facades in this context function as media surfaces — not merely as shelter, but as carriers of identity, aspiration, and civic meaning. The renders show buildings whose facades are simultaneously structural and communicative, their material texture amplified by artificial lighting to produce depth, shadow, and warmth that disappears in flat daylight photography.

Technical Specifications

Urban Scale: The renders depict street-level urban blocks with building heights ranging from 2 to 6 storeys, consistent with the mixed-use commercial fabric of central Dakar. Ground floors are activated with retail frontages, open arcades, and informal market stalls.

Facade Materials: A mix of painted concrete, ceramic tile cladding, and metal panel systems are depicted. Many surfaces are treated with light-reflective coatings or finished in high-gloss paint to maximize the luminosity of uplighting and signage glow.

Lighting Strategy: Three tiers of artificial lighting are at work: ambient street lighting (high-pressure sodium and LED column fixtures), commercial signage (backlit acrylic panels, LED channel lettering, neon tube lighting), and architectural accent lighting (recessed ground-level uplights and concealed linear LED strips on cornices and canopies).

Signage: Brand identities shown include a mix of local Senegalese commercial brands and global luxury references, printed on fabric banners, applied as vinyl lettering, and formed as three-dimensional metal fabrications mounted to facade supports.

Blueprint & Urban Plan Notes

The urban plan underlying these renders follows a modified grid characteristic of Dakar’s colonial-era street network, overlaid with informal densification. Street widths range from 6 m (pedestrian lanes) to 20 m (primary commercial boulevards). Building setbacks are minimal to zero, creating a continuous street wall that is essential to the nighttime enclosure effect.

Ground-floor plans show open-front retail bays of approximately 4–6 m width and 8–10 m depth. Upper floors are planned as flexible live-work units accessible from shared stair cores at the rear of each building plot. Rooftop terraces serve as informal community spaces, visible in the renders as illuminated silhouettes against the night sky.

Project Overview

This project explores the intersection of Senegalese vernacular tradition and contemporary residential design. Set against the backdrop of West Africa’s dynamic coastal and semi-arid landscapes, the house employs exposed brick facades, water features, and deeply shaded volumes to create an architecture that is both climatically responsive and visually expressive. The design draws from a long legacy of brick craftsmanship in the region while reinterpreting it through a modern spatial language.

Design Philosophy

The central design thesis is one of thermal comfort through material honesty. Brick, one of the most abundant and thermally efficient materials in the Sahelian context, is used not as cladding but as the primary structural and expressive element of the façade. Its mass absorbs heat during the day and releases it slowly at night, moderating interior temperatures without mechanical systems. Water — whether in courtyard pools, wall-mounted cascades, or shallow reflecting basins — further cools the ambient air through evaporation, referencing the ancient sahn tradition of the Islamic courtyard house.

The composition avoids the generic tropical modernism that dominates much of urban Dakar. Instead, it insists on a dialogue between the house and its site: the orientation of windows, the placement of shading screens, and the gradient of public-to-private space all respond to the specific solar path, prevailing winds, and social patterns of daily life in Senegal.

Technical Specifications

Primary Structure: Load-bearing brick masonry with reinforced concrete ring beams at each floor level. Brick units are locally fired, with a typical dimension of 230 × 110 × 75 mm, laid in a running bond pattern with flush mortar joints for a crisp, contemporary finish.

Façade System: Double-skin brick wall with a 50 mm cavity for thermal insulation and drainage. The outer leaf is textured and perforated in select zones to allow cross-ventilation while maintaining privacy. Laser-cut steel screens over window openings provide solar shading and a secondary decorative layer referencing traditional Senegalese geometric patterns.

Water Features: A central courtyard pool (approximately 4 m × 2 m, 400 mm depth) is fed by a recirculating pump system. Water overflow is directed to a subsurface gravel bed for ground recharge. A secondary wall cascade on the south-facing courtyard elevation uses a thin-film flow system over an etched brick surface.

Roofing: Flat reinforced concrete slab with a 150 mm screed build-up and waterproof membrane. The roof terrace is shaded by a lightweight steel pergola with tensioned fabric panels, creating a usable outdoor living space.

Approximate Floor Area: 280–320 m² (gross), arranged over two stories with a ground-floor public zone and private family quarters above.

Blueprint & Floor Plan Notes

The plan is organized around a central courtyard that acts as the spatial and environmental heart of the house. Ground floor: entry vestibule → courtyard → living and dining rooms to the east, kitchen and service areas to the west. A staircase adjacent to the courtyard leads to the upper level, where three bedrooms and two bathrooms are arranged along a shaded gallery corridor facing inward.

All principal rooms are double-aspect, with windows on both the courtyard side and the outer facade. The courtyard-facing openings are larger and unscreened to maximize natural light and air flow; outer façade openings are smaller and fitted with operable brick screens. The service core (kitchen, bathrooms, utility) is consolidated on the west wall to create clear, uninterrupted living spaces on the east.

Section drawings reveal a split-level relationship between the living room and courtyard, with the courtyard sitting approximately 400 mm below finished floor level — a subtle device that makes the water feature more legible from indoors while creating a sense of enclosure and shelter around the pool.