rchitect in africa
working in West Africa roughly half the year, I have learned many lessons about
ng remotely and practicing in a “developing” country. For the past three years I
oing back and forth as projects demand, overseeing construction and touching
h clients. In case the articles in this blog haven’t been clear enough, we are very
mmitted to re-thinking the way architecture is viewed and conceptualized in the
African urban context.
By Mariam Kamara, Principal Architect, Atelier Masomi
B
ecause many of our current cities are a product of colonization, they are often ill-
fitted to our local context. The materials are usually expensive (concrete and steel)
and quite frankly inappropriate for many countries (do you have any idea how
hot a cement house gets on one of Niger’s 45degrees Celsius days???). More than
that, our standard reflex has been to copy what is done in the West as examples of
what contemporary architecture should be. This is not to say that there is anything
wrong with Western architecture obviously. It is fantastic! But does it work for us?
Can’t we create something equally fantastic that is affordable, adapted and, well,
“us”?
this intense desire to prove that we indeed can produce a local architecture that
dentities, our way of life and is adapted to our harsh climate, we initiated a project
e of four architects called united4design almost 3 years ago. I probably was never
in my life as we worked through the design of the project and resolved it to a
evel. We were going to use affordable compressed earth bricks, design for natural
nd produce spaces that take into account the way people actually live on a daily
r. Soon, It was time to get it built, so I flew to Niamey for three months to find a
crew and get the project started. That is when I was confronted with the first of
checks of practicing in my home country: trying to do something new (earth bricks
estern-looking home) was greeted as an “cute” idea, as people indulged my rants on
king the notion in theory, but unwilling to believe that it could work. This might be
but I was under the impression that the resistance came from the fact that I am an
tect, and a local to boot! Hear me out...
in Niamey, I showed many people our housing design and got fairly positive and
esponses to the design overall, though many commented that using earth blocks
y means that these homes are for a lower socio-economic class (more on this in
. I then went on to show it to a prospective construction company in order for
mit a bid, but their reaction was a very lukewarm. They questioned the intent of
articularly the fact that it intended to use earth bricks for 2-story buildings. They
gested we use concrete as that would make more “sense” and would be safer.
tion however, took a sharp turn when they asked more questions about the team
READ more
africandesignmagazine.com
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