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The Seasons Villa in Guinea

30 + 27 March 2024

Design: MOST Monti Studio

Location: Guinea, West Africa

Photos by Andrea Ceriani

The Seasons Villa, West Africa

MOST Studio completes an ‘urban-sized’ residential project in Guinea, West Africa.

International architecture firm MOST studio has completed The Seasons, an unconventional residential project comprising a multi-functional villa with contemporary interiors, a garden, a mosque, a pool, and a basketball court. Raising on a large, unoccupied hilly area that slopes towards the sea, the project blurs the lines between urban and residential.

Conakry, Guinea, October 2023 – “As an international team of architects and designers working across West Africa, we often deal with projects set in non-spaces – liminal areas that neither humans nor nature have completely conquered or reclaimed. It’s in one of these areas that we created The Seasons.” Explains Mirco Monti, principal and founder of Dakar-based MOST Studio. “According to philosopher Silvio Petrosino, the act of building is not about just assembling materials and volumes but how the built project itself shapes and informs the space it occupies, often in an unforeseeable way.”

Intimacy & Seaview

The project is based on three simple principles: sea view, division of space and privacy. The Seasons is nested on a slope between an urban district of the city of Conakry, Guinea, and, on the other side, the beach. The main building is a multifunctional villa stretching in parallel with the seafront in order to provide maximise exposure to the sea. The other façade faces the neighbourhood. For privacy reasons, it features minimalistic white ethereal volumes shielding any view of the interiors. Inside, all the light-filled interiors face the seafront thanks to floor-to-ceiling wall facades providing an almost seamless view.

“Architecturally speaking, The Seasons’ 7,000 sqm is quite a peculiar size: residential or urban?” Indeed, the project has been conceived as a small, self-sufficient ecosystem centred around a 2,000 sqm villa on two levels. The Seasons is fully equipped with all services from the beauty salon to the chapel, from the spa to the playground and gym. Like a district scaled down to family size.

The Villa

The villa is divided into three layers. A more external white volume with slits houses the guest room, the bathrooms, the cinema room, and the studio. The second layer is a sandwiched, open-air tropical garden bringing light and ventilation into the house. The latter hosts the living and dining rooms and kitchen, the family area, the office and the five bedrooms on the first floor.

The main entrance is covered by a metal canopy. Once inside, the sea view is revealed while stairs and corridors direct to the other areas of the villa. The villa features also two volumes perpendicular to the building’s main axis that seem to project toward the sea. The first one features the pool lounge in visual dialogue with the outdoor swimming pool. The second volume is dedicated to wellness and features a beauty salon, a medical room, a massage room, a jacuzzi, a sauna, a steam room and a gym.

“The main element that links these different spaces is water.” Adds Mirco Monti. “A mirror of water originating in the pool facing the sea, flows through the entrance and over the other façade, contouring the whole villa. This « water line » holds the different spaces together and allows a continuous reflection of light on the facades.”
The mosque and the playground

MOST has also designed an open-air basketball court and a mosque for religious ceremonies in the embankment lying between the sea level of the villa and the upper land at the border with the neighbourhood. The religious space is a pure white cube split into halves by a slit that creates a striking mystical lighting effect on the walls and the ceiling, while also pointing to Mecca.

Sustainability

Being built on a lot ‘unreclaimed’ by man and unconquered by nature, The Season does not dent the surrounding natural environment. The project features a water purification system before it enters the sewage system. Thanks to a high-performance glazing system and double walls with insulation and plasterboard, The Seasons minimises energy dispersion, providing a healthy environment for its inhabitants.

The Seasons Villa in Guinea, West Africa – Property Information

Architects: MOST Monti Studio – https://www.moststudio.it/
Guinea – 2023.

Team: Mirco Monti, Omar Gueye, Virginia Barbieri, Ines Savi De Tove, Moustapha Sene, Alioune Badara Fall
General contractor: Hitech

Entrance doors: Oikos
Internal doors: Lualdi
Bathroom design: Villeroy & Boch
Kitchen and surfaces: Porcelanosa
Bathtub & SPA: Jacuzzi
Lighting: LED C4
Glass: Teofilo
Furniture: B&B Italia, Bentley, Cattelan Italia, Désirée, Ditre Italia, Maxalto, Molteni, Poliform, Poltrona Frau, Zalf

Photography by Andrea Ceriani

The Seasons Villa, Guinea, West Africa images / information received 270324

Location: Guinea, West Africa

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