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Workplace & Office / Interior Design, Architectural Visualization & Graphic Design — 2010 · Emerald House

Emerald House

A rendered double-height entrance hall: a long white reception desk with a pale oak end panel and two white task chairs sits under a black ceiling bulkhead with recessed downlights, against a grey brick wall and a textured timber screen; beyond, a stair with glass balustrades rises to an upper level over a planted trough of small trees, while a lounge of dark ottomans and a black sofa on a grey rug occupies the right-hand glazing, all on a pale tiled floor.

A 2010 competition entry for the Emerald House office development, for which the studio joined the winning team and had only four days to deliver the interiors. Eight plates are kept here: the four competition views — entrance hall, executive wing, an isometric of the open office floor and the banner that presented the entry — and four further views published in 2012, two of the gym and two of the office modules.

The studio’s own note records both the result and the turnaround: “R.D+V.S was privileged enough to be part of the winning team. We had only four days to work on the interiors.” The views were modelled in SketchUp and rendered with V-Ray for SketchUp.

The entrance hall is the civic room of the scheme. A long white reception desk with a pale oak end panel is set under a black ceiling bulkhead, with grey brick and textured timber behind it and a stair rising to an upper level beyond. Planting troughs soften the arrival, and a lounge of dark ottomans and a black sofa is pulled in under the full-height glazing to the right.

The executive wing is worked as a corner room with a timber floor and a wrap of glazed blinds looking out over the city. A sculptural white helical stair wraps a column at one end, a glass-topped desk with three white chairs sits against a horizontally striped feature wall, and a floor-to-ceiling white grid shelving unit is inset with a single oak panel.

An isometric cutaway sets out the open office floor: clusters of shared desks with amber chairs on a dark floor, white columns, glass partitions and orange meeting-room walls, an internal planted garden, and a timber-decked terrace of tree planters running the length of the curved facade behind a moss-green screen wall.

The entry was presented under its own identity. A black panel of diagonal stripes carries the EMERALD HOUSE wordmark at the left, and three green-duotone panels drawn from the other plates — the lounge, the executive desk and the isometric floor — run across the rest of the banner, with the studio address along the foot. The emerald tint ties the graphics back to the name.

The studio returned to the project in a second post, EMERALD HOUSE , ACCRA GHANA - 3D VISUALIZATION, and that post supplies what the first one does not: the architecture was Incept Limited’s, while interior design and 3D visualization were R.D+V.S’. It also names the team by role — interior design by Jude Abbey; modelling by Jude Nyoagbe, Jude Abbey, Nii Okpoti, Gideon and Mawufemor Kwadzo; texturing, rendering, post-processing and textures by Jude Nyoagbe. The four frames are watermarked with the studio’s NEW.LIFE.2.0 series line dated March 2012, so they are a later pass on the same development rather than part of the competition set.

The gym is the one leisure room in the scheme: a dark timber floor, a mirrored wall banded with athletic photography over the free-weight rack, and full-height diagrid glazing that looks straight onto a planted atrium, so the weights sit in what reads as a garden room. The two office modules are the working floor — desks on white benches under a grid of square light panels with a yellow-carpeted spine between glazed partitions in one, and a run of oak-pedestal workstations down a boldly striped carpet towards a red bulkhead in the other.

The competition set was published on the studio’s blog on 8 September 2010 as EMERALD HOUSE | COMPETITION RENDERS and the later views on 3 June 2012; both posts are on blogspot — the 2010 renders and the 2012 visualization set.

A rendered double-height entrance hall: a long white reception desk with a pale oak end panel and two white task chairs sits under a black ceiling bulkhead with recessed downlights, against a grey brick wall and a textured timber screen; beyond, a stair with glass balustrades rises to an upper level over a planted trough of small trees, while a lounge of dark ottomans and a black sofa on a grey rug occupies the right-hand glazing, all on a pale tiled floor.
A rendered corner executive office on a timber floor, wrapped in full-height glazing with horizontal blinds and a hazy city view beyond: a sculptural white helical stair curls around a column at the left, a glass-topped desk with three white chairs stands against a horizontally striped feature wall, and a floor-to-ceiling white grid shelving unit inset with a single oak panel closes the right-hand side under a textured white ceiling.
A rendered isometric cutaway of a curved open-plan office floor floating on a white ground: clusters of shared desks with amber chairs on a dark floor between white columns, glass partitions and orange meeting-room walls, an internal planted garden, and a timber-decked terrace of tree planters running the length of the facade behind a moss-green screen wall, with a shadow of the glazing cast to the right.
The competition presentation banner: a black panel of diagonal stripes at the left carries R.D+V.S PRESENTS and a large EMERALD HOUSE wordmark, followed by three green-duotone panels cropped from the other renders, a lounge with a black sofa, the executive desk with white chairs, and the isometric office floor, with the studio address along the foot.
A rendered gym on a dark timber floor: a wall of mirrors banded with black-and-white athletic photography over a rack of free weights and a flat bench at the left, a cross trainer and a weight bench in the foreground, and a full-height glazed wall with a diagrid structure looking onto a planted atrium of potted trees and shallow steps.
The same gym from the other corner: a bright yellow feature wall and a white door at the left with a potted plant at its base, the head of a treadmill in the near foreground, and a decline bench and a dumbbell rack standing on the dark timber floor in front of the mirrored, photo-banded wall.
An open-plan office module seen along its circulation spine: white desks carrying flat-screen computers at the left with a grey task chair drawn out, a white structural column in the middle of the floor, a yellow-carpeted walkway running between glass partitions under blinds, and a recessed ceiling grid of square light panels overhead.
A second office module: a run of workstations with oak pedestal units, white chairs and screens down both sides of a boldly striped multi-colour carpet, a red bulkhead closing the far end of the floor, and a glass-walled meeting room with planting to the right.