Having looked at the building design trends in Nigeria’s housing sector, I have come up with a few of these trends that are somewhat mediocre or done out of ignorance. And architects, designers, Builders, developers and more especially clients/owners need to stop these trends.
1. Gable Roofed Gatehouses
Ok you have a nice building design but the gatehouse is gabled at an angle more than 25 degrees and terminated abruptly as if your neighbors gatehouse would continue where yours stopped. This is a misconception that came to become a trend. The first gatehouses designed this way were meant to be mirrored at the adjoining compound, but probably due to lack of consultation or proper regulation the next compound located their own gatehouse elsewhere, leaving the gatehouse roof gabled like some sort of unfinished conversation. Others copied this trend verbatim and replicated thousands of these mistakes all over the country.
2. The High Pitched Roof (Send down the rain)
In architecture we are thought the concept of scale and proportion; the concept of form follows function. For example a bathroom cannot be larger than the bedroom its bedroom. The failure to achieve good sense of scale and proportion produces a failed design, as one psychologically questions the motive or functionality of the design. In the western world where the high pitched roof concept was borrowed, they pitched their roofs higher than angle 20 degrees due to the prevalence of snow. Snow which is heavier than rainwater requires a higher angle to fall off the roof. And in most cases these roofs have attics (rooms within the roof) which give it dual functionality. Here in Nigeria however, people have designed and built houses with roofs inclining to angles up to 45degrees resulting in houses that appear like its “carrying a heavy burden” for a roof. These roofs are not functional in anyway and are a huge waste of time and resources for only one single reason “It doesn’t snow in Nigeria”.
3. Imported stone coated roof tiles
In the early 90’s Nigeria’s building industry switched from the use of asbestos and zinc roofing sheets to long span aluminum roofing sheets. This gave birth to the rise of aluminum roof manufacturing companies. These companies produced durable roofing products that made roofing your house as cost effective as possible because they were made in Nigeria. A lot of good buildings were roofed with the Long span aluminum roof whose design still stood the taste of time. However, the early 2000’s ushered the importation of foreign stone coated roof tiles which everyone rushed to get a piece of. Like a piece of jewelry that was supposed to make you look good no matter how ugly your outfit was. Stone coated roof tiles as an architectural material isn’t designed for all building types For instance if you are developing a commercial building, block of flats or terraced bungalows it would be a wrong choice. You could still roof with long span roofing sheets and get an incredible result. If however you are developing a luxury mansion or a luxury duplex of which you need to be sure you’ve invested enough in design, details craftsmanship and finishes then you can invest in stone-coated roof tiles. Please Note that roofing your building should cost less than 20% of the total cost of your building project cost. The higher the number of floors, the less this percentage. If this reason isn’t convincing enough for you then please not that Eon Musk CEO of Tesla Motors has developed a new range of Solar-roof tiles, So get ready to ditch your old roofs for that.
4. Stones & Stone tiles.
This is one trend we were all guilty of. We borrowed elements for our buildings without reflecting on its impact on our environment or economy. The first set of stones imported was beautiful and didn’t really cost an arm and a leg, subsequently the market became flooded with all sorts of mediocre patterns. Please Note that stones are different from stone tiles. The stones are cut o bricks and can be used as brick-facing finish on walls. However, stone tiles are the ones whose finishes are glossy and are patterned already. In Europe and Asia where these stones are popular, they are mined from nearby quarries not imported. Hence when you get to those parts of the world you would observe that most buildings were finished in the same type of stone finish, because they were mined locally. Covering a poorly designed building in stone doesn’t make it finer. However when stones are applied subtly on the finished of a properly designed house… Then you can appreciate its beauty. For building exteriors proper stone facing should be used NOT stone tiles, save those for your interior spaces.
To be Continued
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