Thread by @equartey

How do you design a 100-year home in Accra?

This thread distills 2+ years of learning

Full floor plans, material choices, and design decisions we made in pursuit of a beautiful, adaptable family home ❤️🏡#QHome (1/n)

If you like granular details, the full 13,000-word essay has lots that won't fit here

You can read it here quartey.com/writing/design…

Sorry it's so long. Goal was to create the comprehensive guide I wish my younger self had access to.

High level notes in thread below 👇🏿

Our home will be two storeys + basement

▸ designed by @Studio_Contra
▸ double wythe fired-clay brick, load bearing
▸ 339 sqm / 3,648 sqf interior
▸ 5 en-suite bds, study, gym, creative workshop
▸ 40k litre rainwater recycling, solar, pursuing IFC EDGE green certification

The design process began with a detailed brief

Here it is quartey.com/writing/home-d…

Including includes site plan, photo references, and more

Studio Contra proposed three possible responses to the brief

House 1 was organised around a courtyard and borrowed heavily from Spanish motifs in the reference photos. This was our unanimous favourite.

We loved its strong sense of enclosure, while still being kind to the street

House 2 was the most contemporary approach, and our least favourite.

It presented a too-severe face to the street, and we didn't enjoy how the rooms related to each other.

House 3 borrowed the most from the Japanese references in the mood board and was our next favourite

We loved the sense of calm and balance from its symmetry, and we *really* loved the generous office/study

We ultimately went in the direction of House 1 and developed it further

I had 3 decision-making principles during the design process

❶ Build something that will last for 100 years
❷ Be a blessing where you’re planted. Be a good steward of the land
❸ Design for all the senses

Whenever I had to make a tough call, this framework guided me

There were several changes we made in sync with these principles

Probably the most significant was the decision to switch from concrete to brick

Here are some of concrete iterations...

...but we ultimately decided to build in brick for several reasons

There are several types of brick bonds. We went with the Double Flemish Bond because of its aesthetic appeal, cost (fewer bricks to achieve strong bond) and low waste (every off cut or half brick can be reused).

Although more economical, it requires more skilled workmanship.

⭒ The Courtyard

We create a sense of transition into this serene space in 3 ways

❶ Corridor creates moment of compression and release, signalling a tonal change in space

❷ Entrance trellis creates sense of enclosure. Heightens feeling of crossing threshold

❸ Finally, there's a material change in the ground treatment, where the floor underfoot switches from pavers to cobblestones

All three things subconsciously signal that one has crossed a meaningful threshold into another space.

We’re specifying the windows in steel instead of aluminium because:

▸ Steel is stronger than aluminium, which allows much of the window wall to be made with slender sightlines
▸ Steel is more fire resistant than aluminium
▸ Steel lasts for a long time with minimal maintenance

⭒ Living Area

The courtyard flows into a living area with a generous ceiling, and the central tree helps block neighbour's view into the heart of the space

The wall of glass on the right-hand side also helps make the courtyard feel much wider than it is

⭒ Kitchen

There were no windows in the kitchen where I grew up. A few years ago, the gas cylinder exploded.

My mother wasn’t home, but the images of the aftermath of the explosion still haunt me.

That incident was a strong motivation for making progress on the house.

All of which is to say, the kitchen has special meaning for me.

We're specifying an induction cooktop over gas because:
▸ Induction stoves cook 2x faster than gas
▸ Gas stoves produce unsafe levels of indoor air pollution
▸ With induction, no energy is lost wastefully heating the air, so the kitchen is much cooler

⭒ Bedrooms

The upper floor bedrooms went through a number of iterations, eventually resulting in their most distinctive feature: a nook that cantilevers slightly over the ground floor.

I got the idea for the nooks while researching the courtyard typology in different cultures.

While reading about traditional courtyard houses in the Middle East, I learned about the mashrabiya (also known as the shanashil.

I enjoy how this form provides a soft edge to the room.

We were also able to repurpose the negative space created by the nook projections to create a tiny balcony garden to bring some greenery closer to the bedrooms.

⭒ Basement

We didn’t go into the project planning to do a basement. But then the geotechnical survey report came back quartey.com/writing/geotec…

We realised that the water table was lower than we had thought, and that the option of a basement was available to us

We were digging deep anyway for the recycled rainwater storage, so activating the lower level allowed us to have a dedicated guest bedroom, laundry room, and more long-term storage

Here is the sketch I sent Studio Contra pitching how we might handle light and air access to the basement. The next frame shows how they beautifully resolved it

The bridge over the lightwell cleverly provides visual privacy to the basement bathroom (frosted glass helps too)

Candidly, introducing the basement significantly increased the cost and complexity of the project

But I believe strongly that part of being a good steward of land is to maximise its use, so I'm at peace with the investment

⭒ Artwork

We choreographed the placement of windows to allow ample space for lots of wall-hung artwork.

Part of this is because my brother @aquartey_ is an amazing professional photographer and I'm looking forward to hanging large versions of his work everywhere (photo by him)

There are also several African artists I hope to collect from in future, including @joelagbaje (1st frame) @ChidinmaNnoli_ (2nd frame) @iamoheneba (3rd frame) @Adxnna (4th frame)

⭒ Landscape (and The Secret Garden)

There are three main themes we have in mind for flowers
▸ White and purple as primary flower colours
▸ Strongly fragrant flowers to colour spaces with their scent
▸ Plants that are natural mosquito repellants

We’ll be putting special thought into an area we’re calling The Secret Garden

This grid was a thinking tool during the project, and it helped me realise we were missing a space where it was easy for someone to be outdoors, alone.

The Secret Garden gives the gift of solitude.

A Black woman.

In a garden.

At rest.

This project is a celebration of my mother, and those three sentence are animating a lot of my thinking on The Secret Garden. Lots to share more on this, later.

This thread is overly long, so I'll stop here. There is so much more in the full essay quartey.com/writing/design…

▸ how we tuned space with sensory design
▸ why we're looking to use rectified tile
▸ full bibliography
▸ details of the project team

much, much more.

I have come to believe that beauty is embodied care quartey.com/writing/why-be…

That wherever attention accretes and care pools, regardless of how fine or modest the canvas, the focus of that concentrated loving intent cannot help but produce the quality of beauty.

We have a long way yet to go. I’m sure there will be many more surprises, and I’ll continue to document what we learn.

Is this project perfect? I am confident that it is not.

And I look forward to this new addition to our family teaching me for many years to come.

As a very private person, it feels acutely uncomfortable to be so open about such a personal project.

But I feel like I owe it to everyone who dreams of home.

Especially to that scared little boy and his family as they turned a windowless garage into a loving home.

But my sincere hope is that when all is said and done, my family feels, with their entire bodies, that I have loved them impossibly, deeply.

I hope they feel in every decision, embodied care.

We hope to move in in time for Christmas 2022. Wish us luck. ✌🏿❤️ (35/35)

Do you have any questions, recommendations, or advice for me? Please feel free to reach out on Twitter (either as a reply or DM) or via email

Email address is at the bottom of the full essay quartey.com/writing/design…