-Ayodele Arigbabu.
It's always interesting meeting an architect in his own space. The
last time the Design Sleuth met with Taiwo Aina at his Victoria Island
office was in 2008 when we had cause to collaborate on his pitch for
the Africa Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in China. It was fun
engaging with a literally out-of-the-box design initiative, albeit
that the endgame left Aina feeling sour with the Chinese. "I'm not
having anything to do with the Chinese again," he said while we had a
chat on a wet Sunday afternoon. Aina looks the quintessential
architect, with a clean pate and slim round glasses, the round neck
tee shirt he wore was dark grey in colour, but got me wondering
whether black tee shirts were still in vogue internationally as the
de-facto uniform for 'trendy' architects. The office has a retro feel
to it and has a slightly surreal air when you visit outside office
hours. The chairs at the workstations are empty but you can almost
hear the mouse clicks and digital whirs that would take up the space
when each workstation is manned.
We played catch-up, talking about our shared interests in digital
media, 3D modeling, animation and interactive arts. Aina was for quite
a period a distributor for Graphisoft - manufacturers of Archicad -
which was the best thing to happen to architectural modeling,
visualization and Building Information Management before Revit took
over the scene and made Archicad look obsolete. "I ran into someone
with an amazing portfolio recently and couldn't believe he did it all
with Archicad," Aina mentioned. We both concurred that it's not the
tool, but the man (or woman I must add) that uses it, besides, being
in competition, the software vendors are in a constant process of
continuous improvement.
Then we talked about a project of his which had only recently been
commissioned. I had noticed the Mercedes Benz Place on the Lekki
Expressway several times while plying the route without realizing that
Aina's Building And Technical Information Consultants (B+TIC) was
responsible for it. I had wondered why the project took so long to
reach completion; now, talking with the architect behind the project;
I got to understand about the challenges behind direct labour
contracts and the fabrication of exposed structural steel members in
an industry where bespoke steel works are difficult to procure. The
Mercedes Benz Place comprises a business park made up of the Mercedes
Benz Center (show room, diagnostics, body shop and spare-parts store)
Bang and Olufson Center, Technogym and an Ecobank branch. B+TIC were
architects and project managers with Fred Moye Engineering as
structural engineering consultants. Jengs Engineering provided
structural engineering consultancy and Dwab Costprudence were quantity
surveyors. The project had Domus Construction Limited and Interkel
Nigeria Limited as contractors, Eurotech as Roof Contractors and EBM
being responsible for the Aluminium works while Dorman Long provided
specialist steel works fabrication.
For the project which is the 3rd Mercedes Benz project Aina would
deliver for Mercedes Benz Nigeria whose Managing Director, Benson
Uwatse (husband to visual artist Chinwe Uwatse who also runs Bang &
Olufsen) is a good friend.
According to Aina, the design process involved close interaction with
Mercedes Benz Stuttgart who gave detailed outlines as to how the
Mercedes Benz brand architecture was to be developed for service and
retail outlets. Given that Mercedes Benz's architects in Stuttgart
have stringent requirements for appending the 'star' brand identity to
any outlet, B+TIC had their work cut out for them despite having built
a couple of outlets for Mercedes Benz Nigeria in the past fifteen
years. Having worked in the past on a similar automobile retail and
service outlet for an international brand on the same Lekki
Expressway- The Briscoe-Ford Center , the Design Sleuth could very
well understand what Aina had to go through in meeting Mercedes Benz's
demands. The attention to detail paid off with the adoption of the
new Mercedes Benz Place Lekki as one of their international flagship
centers, just like an earlier facility built for the car brand by
B+TIC tagged 'The Habitat.'
While Aina slipped away for a minute I read a paragraph from a note he
had made on his experience putting the building together:
"Because of its worldwide presence, all aspects of Mercedes Benz
operations are of great significance in portraying their brand values.
The values are conveyed and emphasized through the architecture.
Customers and staff experience the appearance as part of the corporate
and brand culture. The architecture established the design and
ambience of all Mercedes Benz operations formats with the aim of
creating an identity that can be reorganized across all formats."
I'll leave off with another quote from him which lays plain what
brands like Guaranty Trust Bank and now, apparently, Mercedes Benz
have long put into practice in perpetuating their brand identity:
"Since a brand fulfils the real or perceived needs of the customer,
this perception occurs at a subconscious or subliminal level which is
emotional and based on relationship. Architecture and interior design
offer a wider field of synthesis, where all these components can be
brought together to evoke predetermined emotions and spur relationship
between the customer and the brand."
Well said Arc. Aina.
What else does this architect and his B+TIC have up their sleeves?
Well, let's just say I spied a visualization of an egg shaped form –
highly reminiscent of Norman Forster's Greater London Authority
building – pinned to the wall. It's for an office tower that is meant
to replace the building where the B+TIC office is currently situated
in Victoria Island. Shhh…that should be enough gossip for one week
already!
