Architecture studio DeRoché Strohmayer has converted a deteriorating two-storey house on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana, into a retreat for artist and writer residencies.
Named Dot.Ateliers Ogbojo, the retreat combines living areas and workspaces at the edge of the city that offer access to nature and aim to encourage creativity.
The former two-storey home has been transformed by DeRoché Strohmayer with brighter interiors, alongside a new canopy, outside spaces and an open ground-floor facade.
DeRoché Strohmayer has converted a house in Accra into an artist retreat
"Designed to be a place of respite and regeneration, Dot.Ateliers Ogbojo is an adaptive reuse project, characterised by courtyards and voids on all scales, creating spaces of calm and varying levels of privacy within an otherwise heterogeneous, dynamic urban context," studio co-director Glenn DeRoché told Dezeen. "The existing building was a typical two-story family house, not older than ten years but already deteriorating rapidly due to inadequate design and construction methods," added co-director Juergen Strohmayer.
"Our initial steps were subtractive: we removed the central parking lot and replaced it with a garden, we refocused the massing around the courtyard and other pockets of green, and we opened the ground floor facade to connect with this new landscape."
The retreat is designed to host artist and writer residencies
Inside, Dot.Ateliers Ogbojo contains a mix of living ...