Credit Direct Limited is one of the fastest growing microfinance banks in Nigeria, providing microcredit to low to medium income earners. Situated in Ikeja district of Lagos in Nigeria, the new headquarters for CDL consolidates its various facilities into a single building that redefines the conventional notion of a bank building as a closed and private institution, by creating a more approachable, open and civic space to meet the needs of its customers – the everyday people. The specific tropical climate of Lagos suggests an alternative approach to designing a building with distinct private and public functions. A conditioned volume containing the most public functions – efficiently enclosed and protected to reduce heat gain – is suspended above the ground floor comprising an auditorium, entrance lobby and service block. The top floors with more private function have a transparent envelope which increases the opportunity of views and natural ventilation. The envelope is protected by a generous folded roof plate that also harvests rainwater. These distinct spaces are connected in a continuous loop that starts with a lush garden on the ground level leading up to a roof garden via an open walkway, connecting the various functions and providing direct access to the restaurant café. The courtyard brings abundant natural daylight into the heart of the building and its character reduces boundaries between inside and outside to create a communal, contemporary and civic atmosphere. On NLÉ: NLÉ is an Architecture, Design and Urbanism practice focused on developing cities. Nigerian-born architect, Kunlé Adeyemi, founded it in 2010. It currently has offices in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and in Lagos, Nigeria. One of the megacentury’s dominant and unstoppable trends is urbanization. The outcome is a growing number of megacities worldwide, all of which face the same challenges. Within this context just as Silicon Valley acts as the home for new technologies it is the cities of the developing world that will generate responsible solutions for the larger world. As thinkers, creatives and agents of change, NLÉ’s role is to reveal these solutions and apply them so that we shape the physical, human and commercial structures that are critical to the near future of human civilization. Our activities encompass city development research and strategy advisory service, conceptualization and creative structuring, architecture and product design, infrastructure design, arts and cultural urban interventions.