Nubuke Extended
by nav_s baerbel mueller + Juergen Strohmayer

Nubuke Extended completes and reorients the Nubuke grounds, making it into a cultural and civic hub in the metropolitan area of Accra and connecting it to a growing network of cultural spaces in Ghana.

The Nubuke Foundation is a visual art and cultural institution founded in 2007, offering a wide range of programs supporting the arts, culture, and heritage of Ghana.

The design, by nav_s baerbel mueller and Juergen Strohmayer, resolves this programmatic layering through a generosity and specificity of spaces.

Both architects are based in Accra, Ghana, and Vienna, Austria, and founded their practices in 2007 and 2015, respectively.

Green spaces, openness, and simplicity were a driving design focus, allowing the spaces to host a variety of scenarios.

The grounds in East Legon, Accra, are defined by a large variety of day and evening programs that cater to many audiences spanning networks in the city, country, and region.

A new building hovers above the existing garden and frames a central green area, with Nubuke’s Indian almond tree at its center.

It serves as a landmark that responds to both immediate and urban contexts.

The massing strategy for the new gallery building is aimed at creating diverse spaces and spatial situations while acting as a unifying character for the ensemble of buildings and landscapes on the terrain.

That are open for artists, curators, visitors, citizens, and children to engage with.

The new gallery, a split-level, one-room building with high ceilings, no columns, and exposed concrete walls, creates space for site-specific works of art and performances that characterise development in Ghana’s and West Africa’s art world.

Modulations in the floor, formed through a mezzanine, the height of the ceilings, and the walls, create a variety of spaces that allow both intimate and expansive scenarios for exhibitions, performances, and events.

Users of the space are supported by an integrated rail system that allows for the hanging of objects, artworks, panels, and curtains throughout the space.

The monolithic materiality of exposed concrete and the reduced colourscape of the new gallery and campus create a backdrop for colorful activities to take place in and around the buildings.

Nubuke Extended was designed to be cosmopolitan in terms of character and ambition, inviting and provocative at the same time, for both local and regional programmatic scenarios.

Authors nav_s baerbel mueller + Juergen Strohmayer
Location Accra, Ghana
Client Nubuke Foundation
Year 2019
Surface 320 sqm
Collaborators Bollinger & Grohmann Ingenieure (Structural Engineers);
orthner orthner & associates (Architects of Record); Abdul-Rauf Issahaque
(Clerk of works); HITL Construction Ltd. (Concrete works); MeCraft Ventures (Metal works);
Emmanuel Mawudzinwua (Joinery); Dygate Ghana Ltd. (Roofing);
Godwin Sassah (Electrical installations)
Photography Julien Lanoo
House of Chickens draftworks* architects Going public MAJA Autumn 2019 Mountain View Office SK Law Shoah Memorial Kawahara Krause

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