Casa-Oni

A shell, and everything after it

Casa-Oni came to us as a new build: walls up, nothing else decided. That is a rarer brief than it sounds, and a more demanding one, because there is no existing house to argue with and therefore nothing to hide behind.

We designed the whole interior — space planning, ceilings, lighting, joinery, the kitchen, the furniture — and then built and installed it. One scheme, one team, no handovers in the middle where intent usually leaks away.

Pieces meant to last

The client's one explicit request was that the furniture should still be worth having in twenty years. That ruled out a great deal of what is easily available in Lagos, and it is the reason every piece in this house was made rather than bought.

All of it — the dining table, the media wall, the kitchen, the built-in storage, the loose furniture — was drawn by us and manufactured in our own workshop by IKINI, our furniture arm. Solid timber where it takes wear, considered proportions rather than fashionable ones, and joinery detailed so it can be repaired instead of replaced.

Ceilings doing the work

Much of the character here is overhead. The ceilings are modelled rather than flat — recessed, stepped and lit from within — so each room is defined by its section as much as its plan. In an open house with few internal doors, that is what tells you when you have moved from one space into another.