Private House, Karen – Nairobi
The Place – A bungalow in Nairobi’s leafy suburb Karen sat within the slope of an extensive hill.
The Brief – We were asked to organise the circulation throughout the site from solving the issues of the parking and into the front door and the large veranda at the garden side of the house.
The Design – This really was a problem solving project for an old house. The house itself was sunken into a hill and a bank of soil came only 600mm from the house itself.
We designed a series of sunken courtyards to pull the hill away from the house and paved them using a local grey stone from a nearby quarry. Its important to note that in Kenya its impossible to by ready – to – go stone cobbles and so these were hand-dressed from stone from a local quarry. The stone preparation alone took six months to complete.
Drainage was a key issue, and the design sees stone alignments to allow for the infiltration of the surface water into a series of French drain systems which run under the terraces.
The courtyards are sometimes filled with planting and furniture and sometimes void, but the unity of hand dressed stone cobbles unites all the spaces.
