Mawji Apartments Masaki Peninsula, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Mawji apartments, Masaki

On a plot bordering the Yacht Club Road, just across the shore of Masaki Peninsula in Dar es Salaam, the family villa was built in the 1970s. Due to the recent densification of the area with towering apartment blocks around, the privacy and quietness of the villa and it’s beautiful garden are seriously compromised.

The family, consisting of grandmother, two sisters with their families and a son, wished to replace the villa with a luxury apartment block that would enable housing the whole family as well as apartments for  tenants.

The proposed design – not realized – was to keep a small footprint for the building, in order to save the gardens as much as possible, and provide a lush green backdrop for the apartments with beautiful shaded recreation areas and a swimming pool. This means that parking has been sunk into a half-basement.

The client expressed the wish to make the apartment building as quaint and friendly as possible, and to avoid massiveness. The design responds to this by cutting up the building into three semi-detached towers, linked by open staircase and elevators. The towers themselves are being articulated by protruding and recessing volumes of different height, with abundant terraces, balconies and loggias that are to be overgrown with climbers and plants.