Residential · Afro-Contemporary Fusion
Pavilion Seven
A coastal villa opened to the breeze, with a freestanding lunch pavilion and rooms that can be left for months without looking shut.
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The structural challenge
Salt air, a family that travels, and a brief that asked for a house that feels West African without costume. The inherited colonnade blocked the prevailing breeze and turned the principal rooms into a series of cooled boxes. External timber specified on an earlier scheme had already cupped. The gate and the service road limited the size of any crate that could reach the site, which ruled out several imported stone slabs the client had admired abroad.
The execution
We opened the colonnade into a screened loggia of iroko and limewashed plaster, and let the breeze cross the house again before the air-conditioning starts. Interior rooms are cooler stone and linen, so the contrast with the loggia is deliberate. A freestanding pavilion holds lunch and keeps the main rooms from having to perform every meal. Joinery is iroko and cane. Brass is lacquered for the marine air. Art hangs on a picture rail so the house can change while the family is away. Stone was chosen in sizes that pass the gate, which became a discipline rather than a compromise: smaller slabs, tighter joints, a floor that can be repaired in pieces.