The Marhaba Homes
TYPE
LOCATION
SIZE
YEAR
STATUS
Multi Residential
Nairobi, Kenya
700 sq. meters
2025
Ongoing
The Marhaba Homes is a collaborative project by Studio Mehta Architecture (sm.a) and Object Subject Architecture (O/S)
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Marhaba Homes are a pair of materially austere residences set within a one-acre parcel in Kerarapon, on the southern edge of Nairobi. Conceived as an exploration of what the studio describes as Savanna Modernism, the homes embrace a restrained architectural language rooted in material honesty, structural clarity, and a close relationship with the surrounding landscape.
The design is defined by a deliberate minimalism. Concrete serves as the primary architectural medium—expressed honestly and without embellishment. Rather than concealing the material, the architecture celebrates its weight, texture, and permanence. Carefully detailed formwork, deep structural planes, and precise openings give the homes their character, allowing construction craft to become the central architectural expression.
This material austerity is softened through landscape. Indigenous planting, landscaped roofs, and terraced gardens weave across the architecture, ensuring that the homes remain anchored to their environment. The planted roofs reduce the visual impact of the buildings while allowing them to merge with the surrounding terrain, creating the impression that the structures emerge quietly from the landscape itself.
The two homes are positioned carefully across the site, maintaining independence while sharing a common architectural language. Together they form a calm and grounded composition—structures that sit confidently within their environment while remaining deeply connected to it.
Through their clarity of material and careful integration with landscape, the Marhaba Homes propose a distinctly Kenyan approach to contemporary domestic architecture—one that embraces material restraint, craft, and the quiet presence of the savanna landscape.
