The mission
Rest for All
A company that started in Nigeria, building for the continent. We make structural answers to a problem most places have decided to live with.
Where this started
A parent loses their seat the moment a child falls asleep.
You can watch it happen in any Lagos terminal, clinic waiting room or long service. A child goes to sleep, and the person holding them stops being able to sit, stand comfortably, or leave. The tiredness is not an inconvenience. It is a tax, paid daily, mostly by women, and nobody has built anything to answer it.
We concluded that rest is not a private matter to be solved with willpower. It is infrastructure, like water and light, and it can be installed. That is the entire company: put the room where the people already are.
Where it goes
Rest infrastructure across the continent, starting with the places where the need is least deniable: transport hubs, hospital wards, and the long gatherings that hold families for a whole day.
That means pods built for continuous public use rather than occasional private use. Durable, cheap to maintain, and able to run where the power is not reliable, because designing for ideal conditions would be designing for somewhere else.
Impact
What we will report
We have not run enough pilots to publish numbers, and we would rather say so than round something up. These are the measures we have committed to, and they will appear here when there is real data behind them.
- Communities served
- Reported once the first civic pilots complete.
- Hours of rest provided
- Measured from pod occupancy, reported quarterly.
- Pods deployed
- Published as regional manufacturing comes online.
Who builds this
A founding team of engineers and designers
Hiding Place was started by engineers and industrial designers who build the pods themselves. The modelling, the structural analysis, the airflow simulation and the fabrication drawings are all done in house, by the same people who go out and do the site surveys.
That matters more than it sounds. When a hospital asks what the floor loading is, or a terminal asks how the air actually moves through the cabin, the answer comes from the person who ran the model rather than from a supplier three steps away. It is also why we can change a pod to suit a site without the change taking a quarter.
Modelling and CAD
Every pod is a full parametric assembly before anything is cut. Panels, frame, door and interior are modelled as production parts, not concept shapes, so what leaves the drawing is what leaves the floor.
Analysis and simulation
Structural loading on the frame and roof, and airflow through the intake and cabin, are simulated before a prototype is built. It is how we can quote a ninety-second air change and a floor loading figure with a straight face.
Architecture and site work
Surveys come back as drawings. Ward corridors, concourses and church halls are laid out to scale with the pods in place, so a client sees the circulation they will actually get.
Production and revision control
Drawings, bills of materials and revisions are version controlled, which is what lets a panel damaged on site be replaced from a part number rather than a photograph.
Industrial and interior design
The berth, the light, the latch and everything else a guest touches. Rendered and prototyped before tooling, because the difference between a pod people use and one they avoid is mostly detail.
Acoustics
Dampening is specified from measurement in the environments pods actually go into, then verified on built units. Figures we publish come from tested assemblies rather than material datasheets.
Made close to where it is used
We are building manufacturing capacity in Nigeria rather than importing finished units. It shortens lead times, keeps servicing local, and means a damaged panel is a week’s wait rather than a quarter’s. It is also the only way the economics work at the volumes public rest actually needs.
How we work
What we hold to
Dignity
A door that locks is the whole idea. Everything else in the pod exists to make that door worth closing.
Access
Rest should not be something only the ticketed get. We work with civic partners to put free pods where people are already waiting.
Safety
Fire-rated materials, ventilation that does not depend on a single fan, an override on every lock, and cleaning that runs whether or not anyone remembers.
Restraint
The pods are quiet objects. If one draws attention to itself in a ward or a terminal, we have designed it wrong.
Come and build this
We hire engineers, industrial designers, field operations and people who know how civic partnerships actually get signed. Send us something you have built rather than a cover letter.
Want to work with us?
Whether it is a single ward or a city-wide Haven network, the first step is the same: tell us about the space.