Workplace & Office / Interior Design & Architectural Visualization — 2010 · Public Procurement Authority (PPA)

PPA Ghana Competition

A rendered street view of a multi-storey office block seen from its near corner: a pale stone wing of horizontal window bands on the left meets a full-height glazed curtain wall with green spandrel stripes, both topped by deep cantilevered roof screens on slender columns, with a white entrance canopy at grade, palm trees and a low hedge, and two cars passing on a wide bitumen road in the foreground.

A 2010 competition entry for the Public Procurement Authority of Ghana, in which RDVS supplied the interior design and 3D visualization for an architectural scheme by Tekton Consult. Eight plates present a twin-wing glazed headquarters, from its street elevations to a ground-floor reception built around the national coat of arms and an executive suite on the fifth floor.

The design credit on the competition board reads “Design by Tekton Consult, 3D Visualisation by R.D+V.S”. The architecture was the consultant’s; the studio’s brief was to fit the building out internally and render it for submission, working in SketchUp for the modelling, V-Ray for texturing, lighting and rendering, and Photoshop for textures and post-production.

The block is composed as two mirrored wings joined by a glazed link. Each wing carries a solid stone end and a curtain-wall face banded with green spandrels, and both are crowned by deep open roof screens on slim columns that read as a single gesture across the skyline. The three exterior plates test that composition in daylight, straight-on and at dusk, when the link and the entrance canopies are lit from within.

Inside, the reception is the civic room of the project. A dark polished floor sets a large circular inlay of the Ghana coat of arms and its Freedom and Justice motto, a white runner leads the eye from it to a dog-leg stair with a timber balustrade, and a slatted feature wall carries the words PUBLIC PROCUREMENT AUTHORITY GHANA above a low stone desk. Caramel lounge seating and a planted trough soften the arrival.

Two further reception views explore the same room against different finishes — a pale, unoccupied version, and a warmer one that moves the timber from the balustrade onto the floor and ceiling and switches the wall bands to stone. The executive suite is worked more tightly: a long desk with black chairs, a backlit timber ceiling panel, black shelving, a lounge group on a white rug, and a slatted wall hung with two clocks labelled ACCRA and LAGOS.

Each interior plate is presented as a competition sheet, with the relevant CAD plan inset at the right — the ground floor, which splits the accommodation between the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) and the Internal Audit Agency (IAA), and the fifth floor — drawn at 1:200 alongside the render.

The work was published on the studio’s blog in November 2010 in two posts: PPA GHANA / COMPETITION RENDERS, which carries the three exterior views, and PPA GHANA | COMPETION RENDERS 1, which carries the board and the interiors.

A rendered straight-on elevation of the same office block in daylight: two symmetrical wings of glazed curtain wall with green spandrel bands, each capped by an open concrete roof screen, joined by a recessed central atrium with stacked white floor slabs and a cantilevered entrance canopy over the forecourt, with a red car at the kerb and street lamps in the foreground.

The same symmetrical front elevation at dusk: the twin wings and their deep roof screens read as dark silhouettes against an amber and grey sunset sky, the glazed faces reflecting the last light, and the recessed central link and entrance lit from within above a line of trees.

The competition submission board on a black ground: PPAG COMPETITION set in orange and black over a red, yellow and green rule, above the lines Design by TEKTON CONSULT and 3D Visualisation by R.D+V.S, with the Ghana coat of arms printed in grey at the right and the studio mark and rdvstudiosgh.com address along the foot.

A rendered executive office sheet captioned INTERIOR CEO'S OFFICE: a long dark desk with two black ribbed chairs in the foreground, a wall of slatted blinds to the left, a backlit timber ceiling panel over a lounge group of brown chairs on a white rug, black shelving with a screen, a blue figurative painting, and a slatted grey feature wall hung with two clocks labelled ACCRA and LAGOS, with a fifth-floor CAD plan at 1:200 inset on black at the right.

A rendered double-height lobby sheet captioned INTERIOR RECEPTION: a dark polished floor inlaid with a large circular Ghana coat of arms and its Freedom and Justice motto, a white runner leading to a dog-leg stair with a timber balustrade, a slatted feature wall lettered PUBLIC PROCUREMENT AUTHORITY GHANA above a low stone reception desk, caramel lounge seating at the left and a planted trough of palms at the right, with ground-floor and first-floor CAD plans inset on black at the right.

The same reception view cleared of figures and lit more evenly: the coat-of-arms floor inlay, the PUBLIC PROCUREMENT AUTHORITY GHANA slatted wall and the low stone desk read without the dark cast shadows, the stair and planted trough brighter, and the ground-floor CAD plan inset at the right labelling the Public Procurement Authority and Internal Audit Agency accommodation.

A wider reception view in an alternative material palette: the floor re-drawn in pale timber parquet under the same circular coat-of-arms inlay, the ceiling panelled in dark timber, the feature wall in horizontal grey stone bands behind the desk, orange lounge chairs at the left and a glazed lift lobby to the right, with the ground-floor CAD plan inset on black at the right.