Otunba Offices

Recent office developments in Lagos embrace architectural form merely as image-making. With financial gain as goal, image and show take precedence over spatial experience. The Otumba offices adopt strict budget constraints yet utilize context and natural climate as generative tools to challenge the prevalent office building typology. Form now responds to strict functional, environmental and contextual constraints. The minimum building footprint allows for air to circulate below the offices while the plot is also freed from excessive construction, enabling instead a lush landscape and expansive public spaces. The building volume expands every two floors on both the south and east facade, creating a volumetric brise-soleil shading the offices below, and protecting from the tropical rain. Additional operable louvers play a dual role allowing for natural shading and ventilation but also rotate to transform into a projection screen visible from the street and open public garden spaces.