He grew up between Alemannic Europe and the north of South America. He left Zurich at the peak. He spent ten years between the Bolivian Altiplano and the banks of the Beni. What twenty years of movement taught him about empires, families and places that hold: that is the invisible architecture of Maison Esmeralda Dakar.
The Man Who Searched for His Tibet in Latin America for Ten Years Read Post »
There is a war no one talks about. It is fought on beaches, in financial systems, and in the pages of a children’s novel published in 1973. Maison Esmeralda was not founded on a business plan. It was founded on what we refuse to reproduce and on the name of a three-year-old girl whose genealogy connects Africa to the Americas and returns today toward Dakar.
What We Build Before We Build Read Post »
In the morning, after the movement by the pool, the body asks to be fed with something alive. At Maison Esmeralda Dakar, that living thing comes from the garden and from fermentation: a Senegalese memory far older than any trend. What grows here becomes, in a few days, richer, deeper, more useful to the body.
Mens Sana: What Ferments Under the Dakar Sun Read Post »
That place does not yet exist in Dakar. It opens in 2027. Why this website has no photos — and why that is a position, not a gap.
Maison Esmeralda Dakar: The Experience You’ll Picture Before You Live It Read Post »
Mens Sana — Morning Yoga & Calisthenics Ritual in Dakar There is a conviction running through everything we build here — one ancient enough to have crossed centuries without wearing thin: mens sana in corpore sano. A sound mind in a sound body. Not a gym slogan. Not a wellness tagline. A truth of architecture
Mens Sana — Morning Yoga & Calisthenics Ritual in Dakar Read Post »
Energy crisis in Europe, Senegal producing its own oil and gas. What this changes for mobile professionals who know how to read a map. By Maison Esmeralda Dakar. Working from Dakar.
Working from Dakar in 2026: what the energy crisis changes for mobile professionals Read Post »
Bamboo, rattan, a garden, a long table. Maison Esmeralda Dakar offers three rooms in Dakar with a point of view: materials that breathe in the heat, an outdoor space designed around the sun, and a table that has two lives.
Three Rooms in Dakar. Not One More. Read Post »
Dakar’s calendar — who comes, why, and what they still can’t find when they arrive. I spent months looking at this calendar before I understood what it was actually saying. At first I saw events. Names, dates, categories. Then I started seeing the people behind the events. And that is when something shifted: I recognized
Dakar’s calendar — who comes, why, and what they still can’t find when they arrive. Read Post »
I visited every coworking space in Dakar. Here is what I found. And why I decided to build something entirely different. Here is what ten years of nomadic work across the world’s major cities taught me: coworking spaces have a universal problem. And that problem has nothing to do with the quality of the wifi.
The Manifesto: Coworking in Dakar Read Post »
Why Dakar — and why a private guesthouse in Dakar is not an ordinary decision Someone once called Dakar the Athens of West Africa. The comparison was meant as a compliment. But Dakar does not need Athens, any more than a private guesthouse in Dakar needs to look like what the word hotel brings to
