House Pere

Asking one plot to do two jobs

The brief was two semi-detached duplexes for family use, with a block of rental flats behind them. On a plot this size, that is more accommodation than the land obviously wants to give.

It is also the smarter use of it. The duplexes are the home; the flats behind pay for themselves and keep paying long after the build is finished. A plot that only holds a house is an expense. A plot that holds a house and a rental block is an asset.

Keeping the two apart

The difficulty with putting tenants and owners on the same land is that both ends can end up compromised — the family loses privacy, the flats feel like an afterthought at the back of someone's compound, and neither lets well.

So the site is planned as two addresses rather than one. Separate approach, separate parking, separate front doors. From the duplexes you are not looking into the flats; from the flats you are not walking through the family's space to get home.

Why it looks the way it does

The roofs are pitched and the eaves are deep, which is not nostalgia — it is what works here. A steep roof sheds a Lagos downpour quickly instead of holding it. A deep overhang keeps the sun off the wall below, so the wall stays cooler and the paint lasts longer.

Openings are placed to catch cross-ventilation rather than to make a symmetrical elevation, and the shaded recesses do the decorative work. The client took to these elements immediately, which is worth saying: tropical design reads as warm and familiar in a market where a lot of new building does not.