Works
- Project name: Beni-A Residence
- Location: North Airport Road,Accra, Ghana
- Project year:
- Design: 2017
- Construction: December 2020
- Completion: December2023
- Main House: 260sq m | 2,799 sq ft
- Outhouse Floor Area: 70sq m | 753 sq ft
- Footprint: 42sq m | 452 sq ft
- Architect: Abdul-Rauf Issahaque
- Structural Engineer: Ernest Worla Tornu
- Main Contractor: Amzoon Construction
- Earth Blocks Supply: Geointel Housing and Eno Bricks
- Carpentry: Daniel Ansah
When architect Abdul-Rauf Issahaque was approached to design a home for a single family in Accra's Airport Residential area, he received two key requests from the client who is an art collector and also a builder. The first was practical: a house she could “clean all by herself”. The second was aesthetic and conceptual: a house that wouldn’t “attract attention.” At the time, Issahaque was a student at the prestigious architecture school at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) undergoing an internship in Accra with James Cubitt Architects. Issahaque translated the first to mean scale and the latter from his interactions with the client, who he describes as simple and straightforward, to mean a minimalist design approach. These two requests formed the criteria for a sustainable and compact house that rigorously and efficiently utilized the site it sits on.
The Beni-A Residence is situated on a quiet street, blending subtly into its affluent surroundings. The neighborhood is lined with large, luxurious homes, many of which have high perimeter walls characteristic of Accra's elite residential districts. However, in contrast to the ostentatious displays of wealth, the Beni-A residence is a deliberate understatement, a four-bedroom residence with a relatively small footprint. Its modest yet striking form, featuring a cantilevered gabled front, makes a quiet statement while maintaining an air of sophistication.
Not far from the residence, in the neighboring Tetteh Quarshie Interchange and Shiashie area of East Legon, luxury high-rise apartments dominate the skyline. Many of these structures feature cascading facades and expansive balconies, signifying Accra's rapid urban transformation. A few blocks away, a growing number of luxury townhouses have emerged, a phenomenon that has gained momentum within the last decade. The definition of the modern Ghanaian home is shifting, influenced by global architectural trends and an evolving local identity. In the midst of this changing landscape, Beni-A stands as a beautifully executed counterpoint—a contemporary yet deeply contextual response to its environment.
Issahaque’s involvement in this project was particularly significant, as it marked his first independent commission following his licensure. The name "Beni-A" is a thoughtful fusion of meanings: "Beni" derives from the Latin word Bene for "something done well," while"A" represents the first initial of the client’s daughter, who was on the way when the project began. More than just a house, Beni-A was designed as a sanctuary—a home where a single family and their occasional visiting relatives could retreat from the city's hustle and bustle. The design journey spanned six years beginning in 2017, with an extended pause and picking up again in 2020 during the pandemic, allowing for close collaboration between architect and client. The client played a crucial role as a construction enthusiast herself, bringing a unique level of dedication and involvement to the project. An avid traveler who loves music and reading, she was exposed to construction at an early age through her father who built as a hobby. A trait she picked from her father, she preferred architects she could work collaboratively with and Issahaque was the ideal candidate.
Beni-A Residence, cantilevered gabled entrance. Photo by Charles Lawson
Materiality, Craftsmanship, and Housing Typology
Beni-A engages with critical themes in contemporary Ghanaian architecture: materiality, labor practices, spatial planning, and housing typology. It carefully balances these elements, navigating resource scarcity, local building traditions, and passive climate adaptation strategies to create a harmonious whole.
From the street, the residence offers a welcoming presence. Its cantilevered common room and roof terrace orient towards the gentle curve of the road, subtly framing the neighborhood through a full-height glass gable window. The building's shallow form and generous openings promote natural cross-ventilation, enhancing indoor air quality and comfort. The exterior walls, constructed from limewashed compressed earth blocks, not only provide a textured, tactile aesthetic but also enable the structure to "breathe", further supporting a passive microclimate. The exposed rafters of the tropical hardwood roof structure amplify the volume of the interior spaces, contributing to both function and beauty.
Conceptually, Beni-A Residence draws inspiration from the traditional Ghanaian compound house, where communal courtyards form the heart of the home, with individual rooms arranged around them. Here, Issahaque has reinterpreted this typology vertically, stacking spaces to reduce the building's footprint while maintaining the essence of shared and private areas. The cantilevered gable over the entrance provides a sheltered, multifunctional transition space, reinforcing a sense of openness without compromising security. By prioritizing verticality and reducing land coverage, the design makes room for greenery, aligning with the evolving needs of urban living in Ghana.
Open courtyards and terraces extend the living spaces, fostering an indoor-outdoor lifestyle that feels natural and contemporary. The use of double-height space allows for abundant natural light, creating an ideal backdrop for the client’s extensive art collection.
Across from the driveway and oriented perpendicular to the main house sits the “outhouse”, a post-Covid loft addition intended to house staff. Its flat roof was intentional to contrast, and not compete, with the gabled volumes of the main house. Introverted, its windows overlook the garden, its double height at the same time strategic to create privacy for the garden, shielding it from surrounding buildings.
Beni-A Residence: View of main house from outhouse. Photo by Charles Lawson
Crafting a Home with Local Materials and Techniques
A continuous exploration of material palettes and construction methods shaped the project’s evolution. The goal was to achieve an elegant yet understated aesthetic through minimalism and raw material expression. The primary building envelope consists of limewashed compressed earth blocks paired with a skeletal concrete framework.
Ghana’s construction industry has increasingly leaned toward industrialized, imported materials, leading to a decline in traditional crafts. Many local artisans struggle to compete with mass-produced alternatives, making handcrafted techniques rare and expensive. This project, however, sought to resist that trend, deliberately slowing down the building process to accommodate the expertise of small-scale workshops and independent artisans. Fortunately, the client’s background in construction proved invaluable. Her extensive network allowed Issahaque to source quality materials and skilled laborers.
The project prominently features a local wood palette: Afromosia for the stair treads and bookshelves, Dahoma for the exposed roof rafters and vertical fins on the outhouse, and Asanfona for the interior doors. These choices introduce warmth and richness, complementing the cool blue hues of the paintings and curated vase collections.
From the exterior insulated steel doors to the tension rods supporting the exposed rafters and to the burglarproofing, each piece was crafted locally and underwent several iterations. Issahaque worked closely with the artisans to make several mockups testing scale, function, materiality and finishes to attain the final look, a feat he admits would be impossible without a client who was open to trying new ideas.
Beni-A Residence: View of entry. Photo by Charles Lawson.
Living in the Space
Since moving in, the client and her family have embraced the residence's versatility. They have continuously personalized the interiors, allowing the home to evolve with their needs. A passionate art lover and collector, and heavily influenced by Nancy Meyers whose movies she loves, the client has curated a space that seamlessly integrates living, art, and design.
On entering the home, into the open plan living-dining space, you are met with a built-in open bookshelf integrated into the columns supporting a grand steel staircase. On the shelves are her oriental vase and urn collections along with fictional novels. The living room opens into a double volume space with the exquisitely crafted steel and wood staircase, the dining area which opens out onto the swimming pool, and a cozy reading nook.The highlight in here is a suspended bridge in the middle of the double-volume space connecting the two gable volumes expressed on the outside. Natural light floods in from the pool terrace creating the perfect backdrop for the display of her paint collections featuring prominent painters like Ablade Glover and Gabriel Eklou.
Off the dining area is a kitchen with a semi-modern aesthetic that can be completely closed off. The grand, yet practical staircase leads up to a common area at the top where one is met with more paintings. Turning around you find yourself gazing out of the tall gable windows beautiful framing the surrounding neighborhood. A credenza full of cds signifies a jazz and movie enthusiast. The rotated burglar proofing is innovatively integrated into the window frames, the shape of it jointed links mimicking the A-shape of the ceiling and giving it a subtle presence. Off the common area are the bedrooms, each generously spaced, taking advantage of the lofty ceiling space for storage and a play space for the client’s daughter. Outside, a variety of tropical plants surround the pool area and outdoor kitchen, creating an oasis. The client alludes this to her mother who she calls a plant collector.
The Architect’s Vision
Once Issahaque established the principal design criteria of scale, material and style, he early on in the design process set up the design aspects he terms as non-negotiables and then the areas where compromises could be made.
He says “I think establishing values with the client right from the beginning has been one really, really big lesson because that also sets the tone for the project and enabled us to get to where we have reached. That has been a very important lesson to me and I would want to carry on with that.”
For Issahaque, using earth bricks was one of the non-negotiables of the project. Initially specifying grey-colored earth to cast the bricks, when the supplier changed and the grey earth could no longer be sourced, he made the switch to using standard red earth, which ended up being used for the outhouse “loft”.
The burglarproofing was one of the areas he made compromises on with the client. A component he was completely against to include in the design but due to the client’s insistence on security, they reached a middle ground to go with non-standard residential burglarproofing prevalent on the Ghanaian market and opted for a commercial one. He initiated several mockups with the fabricator and client, rotating it, resizing the pipes until they arrived at a satisfactory design.
The urban scale of the Beni-A residence was also important to Issahaque, in how the size of the building related to the scale of buildings in the neighborhood.
“I am also very interested in the zoomed-out perspective of the project by nature in terms of its scale. I was looking at understanding the impact. One of the key requirements was that it had to make a good impact at a scale of 1:200, if you observed it on a 1:200 layout, what it looked like. And yeah, that was very interesting to me as well. So, I worked intensively on this. This was more on the theoretical aspect. And how to then interpret the needs of the client into that scale.”
He goes on “Regarding the urban, specifically the social cultural aspect of buildings, especially in that neighborhood, you will see how introverted they are. The buildings do not respond well to their immediate context, but here, there was a very intentional gesture to open up, especially the common room, which is on the cantilevered gabled part, in how much it reaches out to the street in a special way. If you are arriving from the curve right onto the gable from where the outhouse is, I always say that's my favorite way of arriving at it because the building, that common space, reaches out in a way that other buildings do not. So that was a way of responding to this urban context in my opinion.”
As an emerging practitioner, Issahaque is committed to an architecture that bridges theory, urban research, and heritage conservation. His approach is deeply rooted in contextual analysis, questioning how the past informs the present and future of African urbanism.
His journey into urban research began in 2018 when, while completing his thesis, he joined a team from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. They collaborated with Orthner, Orthner & Associates to study urban gentrification in Ghana. This experience along with being an avid reader of books on cities have shaped his understanding of how cities function and reinforced his desire to diverge from conventional architectural practice. Issahaque also took time off architecture to work with the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, exploring heritage conservation and integration. He has also cited architect and urban designer Elsie Owusu OBE as one his mentors and influences, with whom he has conducted several urban research projects through her organization JustGhana. JustGhana “promotes investment, sustainable development and constructive social engagement in Ghana”.
Recently launching his firm, Praxis Practice, Issahaque’s ongoing pursuit is to craft an architectural language that respects heritage while embracing innovation.
Conclusion
Beni-A Residence embodies the essence of collaboration—between client and architect, heritage and modernity, craft and innovation. By engaging with local artisans, prioritizing natural materials, and reinterpreting Ghanaian spatial traditions, Issahaque has crafted a home that is as thoughtful as it is beautiful and the perfect dream house of his client. This project sets the foundation for his practice, where curiosity, research, and context-driven design converge to shape the future of architecture in Ghana.
Credits
related articles
Architecture, Art, and Design of Africa and the African Diaspora. We seek out African creatives who instigate positive change through design and art.
