Agostinho Apartments: Rammed Earth Pushed to Ten Storeys of Luxury Living in Accra

Earth construction usually enters the conversation through the back door: the low-cost house, the rural school, the material of last resort. Agostinho Apartments walks it straight through the front lobby. It proposes a high-end apartment block in one of Accra's most sought-after neighbourhoods, with a pool, a restaurant and private balconies. The walls are compacted soil. The scheme stakes its credibility on the idea that rammed earth can do luxury without apology.

Agostinho Apartments is designed by Nina Mensah for a site in Accra, Ghana. The project was Shortlisted at Earth Made 2020. The project description is blunt about intent: it is a luxury apartment block, "and as such the atmosphere of the proposal reflects this." The presentation boards go further and set out a material and climatic argument that makes that atmosphere worth examining.

An Empty Lot Among Hotels and Restaurants

The site sits in the Airport Residential Area of Accra, a plot of about 5,600 square metres that the boards show as overgrown grass beside a paved road. The land-use map around it reads like a list of reasons to build here: hotels, restaurants, commercial plots, schools and other residential blocks, all within a few streets. The boards call the location one of the most desirable in the city for its amenities and access. The context sets the brief. Earth construction here does not answer scarcity; it competes with concrete on concrete's home ground.

Ten Storeys Against the One-Storey Myth

The boards describe a 10-storey block: two levels of underground parking, a ground floor given to community use, and eight residential floors above, housing 40 families. The stated aim is to dispel the notion that earth construction tops out at one or two storeys. The elevations carry that argument in their surfaces. Brick-toned panels band across the front, and deep balcony slabs cut white and grey horizontals through them. On the rear, planted terraces and a stair stack break the mass into a lattice. The boards say the finished facade is meant to stay true to, and recall, the layered process of ramming earth. The horizontal striation of the wall becomes the building's visual signature, not something to plaster over.

The material strategy is specific. The boards name monolithic rammed earth for the exterior and interior load-bearing walls, made from locally sourced soil. Stabilizers already common in Ghana, such as cement, laterite, stone and locust bean husk, are added where extra strength is needed. They pitch this explicitly against the heavy use of concrete in Accra, citing recyclability and a lower carbon footprint.

Apartments That Breathe Front to Back

The plans show where climate shapes the building most clearly. Each apartment runs as a slot between thick earth cross walls, with openings at both front and rear, so air can pass straight through the unit. The boards frame this as the central concept: handle thermal comfort through design instead of the air-conditioning typical of private Ghanaian residences, and let the thermal mass of rammed earth regulate summer temperatures. Colour coding sorts the units by household. Teal marks single occupancy with an office, double occupancy or a family of three. Lilac marks a family of four. A family-of-six type appears on the lower floors. A central stair core anchors each cluster.

The fifth floor is the turning point of the section. Here the block steps back, and the lower apartments gain generous furnished terraces on the roof of the floors below, large enough for dining tables and lounge seating. The small key plans show the whole building as an angled bar, bent into a shallow chevron, with the layouts of floors five and six repeated on seven and eight.

A Clubhouse Ground Floor Around the Pool

The bent bar exists to hold a courtyard. The boards borrow the clubhouse, a familiar typology for shared amenity in Ghanaian private residences, and spread it across the ground floor. There are community halls, a lobby, a restaurant, a gym, a playpark and a large lobed swimming pool, with parking pushed underground. The renderings play this up without restraint: striped deck chairs, waiters in aprons, diners under the cantilevered floors and birds wheeling over the water. The ground floor is publicly accessible by appointment, so the boards argue it serves visitors as well as residents. Privacy for permanent residents starts at the first floor, where every apartment gets its own balcony.

Balconies Curving Over the Water

The boards describe the south-east facing block as giving the apartments a high-rise resort feel, and the courtyard elevation is where the design earns that phrase. Continuous balcony slabs follow the bend of the plan and turn it into a curving amphitheatre of terraces facing a rock-edged water feature and the pool. On the lawn side, the stepped profile opens the courtyard to sky, so children kicking a ball sit under layers of overlooking balconies. Planting and a rammed earth perimeter wall secure the edge of the site. The courtyard can stay open and generous inside because the boundary does the work of enclosure.

The renderings show balcony faces finished in white, with patterned screens. That leaves an open question about how much of the earth's character reaches the courtyard, compared with the more frankly earthen street and rear elevations. It is a tension worth noticing. The scheme presents its clearest material honesty to the city and its most conventional resort imagery to its residents.

Why This Project Matters

The most useful thing Agostinho Apartments does is change the audience for earth architecture. The boards name the stigma directly: the perception that earth is "poor architecture." They aim to make it a first-choice material instead of a last resort. Placing rammed earth in a luxury block in a prime Accra neighbourhood tests that claim where it matters commercially. If earth can carry a pool deck and a restaurant and still sell, the argument for using it elsewhere gets much easier.

The proposal also ties its material choice to everyday comfort, not to symbolism alone. Units with openings at front and rear, thick load-bearing walls and private outdoor space on every floor add up to a building that tries to cool itself before it reaches for a thermostat. Whether ten storeys of stabilized rammed earth would hold up under detailed engineering is a question the boards leave for later. The ambition is clear, though, and it points earth construction toward the dense, high-value urban sites where concrete has long gone unchallenged.

View the Full Project

Project team

Designer: Nina Mensah

Competition and award

Shortlisted, Earth Made 2020

Location

Accra, Ghana

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