AP Valletta win the Architectural Review Future Projects Award
AP Valletta win the Architectural Review Future Projects Award with regeneration proposal in Accra, Ghana - with Osu Salem Presbyterian School
The Osu Salem Presbyterian School in Accra, Ghana has been recognised as winner of the New and Old category and highly commended in the Overall category at the 2025 AR Future Project Awards. The entire team has worked behind-the-scenes on gathering momentum for its conservation and reconstruction. As part of the wider Valletta Accra study, its redesign champions a research-based, context-driven approach to heritage regeneration.
AP Valletta’s Osu Salem Presbyterian School in Accra, Ghana, designed in collaboration with David Kojo Derban has been named a winner at the Architectural Review Future Project 2025 awards. The design is a culmination of the mutli-displiciplinary project ‘Valletta Accra’, headed by AP Valletta, David Kojo Derban and Ann Dingli, as an encompassing research methodology for heritage regeneration design based on parallel observation and evidence gathering. The school has been named winner in the New and Old category, and highly commended in the award’s Overall category, therefore being recognised as one of the best three projects in all categories.
The Osu Salem Presbyterian School design is based on the findings and principles of the wider Valletta Accra study, and stands as testimony to an interdisciplinary way of making places.
“This win is important to us because it strengthens our ongoing work and research in an area we define as ‘future heritage’, by which we mean moving beyond heritage regeneration as a static, purely monumental exercise and towards the conservation of the everyday.” says Erica Giusta, one of the recently appointed associate partners at the firm.
“The Osu Salem school is a crucial part of Accra’s built and social history. It once stood as a model of pedagogy, becoming the prototype for education in Ghana. We hope this award will increase awareness around the importance of saving it.” added Ghanaian architect and architectural historian David Kojo Derban.
Once a mainstay of the historically marginalised Osu community in Accra, the Osu Salem Presbyterian School now lies vacant and decaying. The re-imagining of this 19th-century building will incorporate new uses, initially through a programme of repair of the original two-storey structure. The partially collapsed pitched roof has been compromised by rainwater, weakening the adobe infill walls and damaging the timber framework. The restoration will enable the introduction of new flexible spaces, including a multipurpose hall, library, archive and hall of fame honouring the school’s prominent alumni.
As stated by London-based writer Ann Dingli, “this win gives legitimacy to our belief that making architecture is not a singular practice or process. This was a fully research-driven design, backed by first-hand learnings that were gathered on site within the heritage contexts. It purposefully moves away from ‘foreign’, didactic design and insists on a collaborative method.”
The remodelling aims to set wider precedents for restoring and reusing heritage structures across Accra. The project’s success will be contingent on its capacity to encapsulate and express the cultural life of the Osu community.
Judges’ comments
‘The strategy of remodelling the structure learns from the existing historic building.’ Loreta Castro Reguera
‘Reusing what is already there reconnects the building with its history and forms an armature for new activities.’ Joseph Grima
‘The project could act as an exemplar for restoring and reusing historic structures across Accra.’ Indy Johar
Project credits
Osu Salem Presbyterian School design: AP Valletta and David Kojo Derban
Valletta Accra project research: AP Valletta, David Kojo Derban, Ann Dingli
Valletta Accra: A Dialogue Between mercantile Cities: published by Actar (forthcoming)
AR Future Project 2025 winners: https://futureprojects.architectural-review.com/2025/en/page/2025-winners?utm_source=social&utm_medium=badges&utm_campaign=arfp_winnerbadge_apvaletta
The link to the AR story: https://www.architectural-review.com/awards/ar-future-projects/the-winners-of-the-2025-ar-future-projects-awards-have-been-announced
About AP Valletta
AP Valletta’s vision is to create an Architecture that is a place-maker, a container of meaning, a catalyst for the creation of kindship, a fabricator of myth and a producer of narratives. AP Valletta is a Valletta-based team of architects, designers, and researchers. The practice has operated for over 30 years and has continuously expanded its field of activity. AP Valletta provides a wide range of services including Architecture Design, Urban Design and Master Planning, Restoration Theory and Practice, Sustainable Architecture, Structural and Civil Enginering services, Interior design, Strategic Real Estate Consultancy, Graphic Design, Education and Publishing.
About the AR Future Projects awards
Launched in 2002, the AR Future Projects awards are a window into tomorrow’s cities. Celebrating excellence in projects still on the drawing board or currently under construction, and the potential for positive contribution to communities, neighbourhoods and urban landscapes around the world.
About The Architectural Review
Founded in 1896, The Architectural Review has a proud tradition of challenge and criticism, scouring the globe for architecture that provokes and inspires, and offering its unique perspective on the biggest issues of our time. Engaging with the wider social, cultural and political context architecture sits in, independent voices explore the forces that shape the homes, cities and places we inhabit while buildings old and new are chosen as prisms through which arguments and broader narratives are constructed. In print, online, in film and on podcast, the AR continues to be a leading authority on contemporary architecture and architectural culture, and a unique source of intelligence and inspiration.
