The Ovie Brume Foundation is a youth-focused organisation, providing free educational, social and recreational programmes and activities for under-served children from low income homes.
As part of our corporate social responsibility to the society here in Lagos, KMHC Architects offered our professional services at great discount to remodel an existing building on the client’s (OBF) land in Surulere, Lagos while also adding a new Building wing to house two Auditorium and an IT Hub.
The project was divided into two phases.
Phase 1 covers the refurbishment and remodelling of the existing single storey building, amphitheatre and covered outdoor rehearsal stage, while Phase 2
covers the new wing that consists of two Auditoriums, under-croft parking, IT hub and reception area.

CLADDING DESIGN INSPIRATION:
With a very exposed and largely South facing building, thus direct heat gains from the Sun to the three sides of the building, there was the need to factor
into the design a natural cooling strategy. The best option was to use the cladding panels as a shading device with fenestrations to harvest fresh air while also
reducing driving rain penetration .
As part of our drive to infuse African arts & craft into our modern architecture, KMHC studied a few easily available Yoruba arts & crafts and narrowed the
options down to “Ileke”- Glass Beads as inspiration towards the final design of the cladding panels on the new build.

ILEKE- GLASS BEADS HISTORY
The Yoruba people occupying the South West region of Nigeria are largely urban dwellers with very developed cultures and spiritualism.
They had no specific religion, however, they believed in one creator Eledumare (God) and few deities (Saints) before the arrival of foreign
religions and cultures in the late 20th centuries.
Ile-Ife City is their spiritual capital and in Ile-Ife, Ileke (Glass beads) are used for various spiritual and beauty functions such as, worship,
healing, love, rite of passage, chastity, fertility etc.
In Yoruba spiritualism, there’s the Ileke Ifa and Ileke Esu (color coded) while for personal beauty and other uses, there’s the Ileke Idi, Ileke Aje
etc.
Dating back to the 9th and 15th centuries, the glass made Ileke in Ile-Ife were strong in high lime, high alumina content, which is not produced
anywhere else in the world.