Commercial – SPANTONE

Innovation Center — Dakar, Senegal

A contemporary innovation center in Dakar, Senegal, where a patterned brick facade and a central reflecting pool create an institution designed as much for inspiration as for work.

The Innovation Center in Dakar, Senegal is built on the conviction that the physical environment shapes the quality of the ideas produced within it. The design brings together research, collaboration, and public engagement in a building that is open, generous, and rooted in its West African context.

The ground floor layout is organised around a central reflecting pool and courtyard — a calm, contemplative space that gives every part of the building a view of water and sky. Around this core, the plan unfolds into a lobby and reception area, meeting rooms, office and lab spaces, and flexible common areas suited to the varied rhythms of innovation work. The relationship between indoor and outdoor is seamless throughout, with covered walkways and shaded thresholds ensuring the courtyard is usable across all seasons.

The facade uses an enlarged brick module in a patterned arrangement that references local craft traditions while performing a genuine environmental function — filtering direct sunlight, encouraging cross-ventilation, and giving the building a texture that changes through the day as the light moves across it. This is a building that invests in its setting and expects its setting to invest back.

Architectural Renders

Beachside Bar & Pergola — Dakar, Senegal

A relaxed beachside bar and pergola on the coast of Dakar — a hospitality structure built for the open air, with a timber canopy, ocean views, and the kind of design that makes every visit feel unhurried.

Some buildings are about enclosure. This one is about the opposite. The beachside bar and pergola in Dakar, Senegal is designed to dissolve the boundary between shelter and open sky, using a timber pergola structure to provide shade without walls — letting the breeze, the light, and the proximity of the ocean do the rest of the work.

The overall site plan shows the bar set within a larger landscaped area, with outdoor seating zones arranged around a circular feature that anchors the space and draws people in. The bar itself is long and well-stocked, with a service bar running behind the counter and a service hatch system that allows the kitchen to supply the space efficiently without disrupting the flow of service.

The pergola construction is fully documented: posts rise from concrete pad footings, a beam-and-rafter system spans between them, and detailed joinery connections are shown at each intersection. Sliding menu panels, serving hatches, and blue-toned upholstered seating complete the picture — a well-resolved commercial hospitality design that would be as comfortable at opening as it is after a decade of use.

Architectural Renders

Exhibition Pavilion — Urban Site

A compact urban exhibition pavilion built around a dramatic tunnel passage — layering perforated screens, wood slat walls, and textured brick pavers to create a space that rewards careful attention.

The best pavilions make a small site feel like a world of its own. This urban exhibition pavilion achieves that through a sequence of carefully layered thresholds: you approach across a paved forecourt, pass beneath a facade of perforated design screens, and enter through a tunnel passage whose compressed proportions make the interior feel expansive by contrast.

Inside, wood slat walls line the primary exhibition space, their rhythm creating a warm, directional backdrop for displayed work. The floor is concrete slab inlaid with red brick in a patterned bond, adding texture underfoot and reinforcing the sense that this is a considered, material-rich space. A service area runs along the rear of the plan, keeping operational functions discreet and out of sight.

The facade assembly is fully detailed: a structural frame sits behind an outer skin of perforated panels, with an insulation layer and wood block secondary screen between them — a wall that performs acoustically and thermally while doing significant architectural work on the street. Construction uses concrete slab foundations throughout, with structural framing that keeps the interior column-free for maximum flexibility.

Innovation Center — Schematic Design

A large-scale innovation center designed to bring together open offices, research labs, meeting spaces, and a recital auditorium under one dynamic roof — built to US code with a striking multi-volume facade.

This schematic design for an innovation center represents a significant civic and institutional ambition: a building that can house the full range of activities that drive collaborative, creative work — from focused individual research to large-group performance and public engagement.

The ground floor plan is carefully zoned into distinct but connected areas: a welcoming lobby and reception, open office zones, enclosed meeting rooms, laboratory spaces, lab office suites, and a standout auditorium with an inclined floor, designed for lectures, presentations, or recitals. A central courtyard threads through the plan, bringing natural light deep into the building and providing an outdoor gathering space at the heart of the complex.

The facade is composed of four distinct volumes, each clad in a different material — concrete panels, glass curtain wall, triangular interior elements, and metal roofing — giving the building a varied, expressive profile. Inside, perforated acoustic panels line the auditorium and key circulation zones, ensuring that the building sounds as good as it looks. A truss roof system spans the larger spaces, keeping the interiors column-free and flexible. US building code compliant throughout.