The 4×4 House is a proposed housing development in Ibeju Lekki designed by Nigerian architecture practice Design Party. The premise of the house is, as the architects describe it, “…our response to a human desire for individual ownership of homes”.
The design sees a single large mass equally divided into 4 smaller masses, intended to be 4 separate houses for 4 separate families each with appreciable interior and exterior space. Here’s a description from Design Party,
[dropcap size=big]O[/dropcap]wning a home is one big prayer point among most people in Nigeria, so when we received the brief to design this semi-detached house with four flats we decided to explore this notion of ownership within one building. So, we proposed this big loaf of bread and divided it into 4 slices that each flat owner could claim from the exterior to interior.
Unlike the cohort of land sellers and grabbers in an Ibeju-Lekki where there are more shacks than selfie-worthy buildings, our client also wanted to build this house as a future investment to entice a discerning clientele of expatriates and locals ahead of Dangote refinery opening in 2019.
Rejecting the stereotyped homely look of houses we are now accustomed to in Lagos, we wanted to fully embody our client’s wish for a “hotel feel”; so we treated the exterior with aluminium panels and sliced open the extruded balcony ends of the bread to offer views to the adjoining street.
PROJECT DETAILS
- Location: Ibeju Lekki, Lagos
- Architects: Design Party
- Design Lead: Baba Oladeji
- Project Team: Baba Oladeji, Adeposi Okupe, Calin Petrescu, Tosin Adeoye
