What 'sustainable' actually means on a Kaduna building site

Sustainability is often sold as solar panels bolted onto a finished building. We think that is backwards.

The cheapest, most durable sustainability decisions are made before anything is built: which way the building faces, where the windows go, how deep the shading is, and whether the materials can be sourced within a day's drive. Get those right and the mechanical systems get smaller, cheaper and less likely to fail.

On Rimi Court Residences we spent an extra two weeks on the massing study. The result was apartments that stay comfortable for most of the year without air-conditioning, and a solar array half the size we originally budgeted for.