The countercultural art movement began with a group of students at the Academy of Fine Arts, Kinshasa, who decided to make art from what they could find around them. Most of what they found was the waste of faraway strangers: tires, foam, bottles, paint cans, CDs, flip-flops, exhaust pipes, and more. In 2015, the artists founded the collective Ndaku Ya Life is Beautiful, led by Eddy Ekete, and began performing while wearing their startlingly creative costumes.

Each costume echoes the ancestral clothing arts of the Congolese, and each has its own story to tell. Jared Kalenga’s “Robot Annonce” is a suit made of broken radio parts in a warning against the spread of fake news. “Femme Électrique” is a costume made of electrical wiring by Falonne Mambu, symbolizing the Congo’s inconsistent electrical service and the kidnappings and sexual assaults that occur when the lights go out.

“Tin Can” by Mvunzi Muteba Jr. aims to raise awareness among Africans about how the presence of multinational companies (such as those mining for rare minerals) has affected the continent and kept its citizens poor despite its many riches. “Tire Man” by Savant Noir is a protest of those stolen resources, like the rubber used to manufacture tires. Other issues represented by the costumes and performances include gang violence, viruses, pollution, a lack of safe drinking water, and the Western-style consumerism that’s beginning to creep into the country.

Gladieu’s photos capture these costumes against relevant backdrops, including graffitied concrete walls, industrial sites, gutters full of trash, and public street markets with locals looking on. In publishing the book, he hopes the levity and creativity of the images will catch the attention of Westerners who don’t want to be guilted into caring about where their waste ends up. His approach celebrates the Congolese culture and the resilience of the community of Kinshasa, sharing the ways in which the artists have reclaimed their experiences and translated them into something beautiful.

“(In the photographs), we are talking about ecology, but we are talking about ecology through African masks,” says Gladieu. “As you can see, they’re completely covered up. You don’t see any part of the skin. The traditional masks were done with natural materials. They symbolized the spirit of the ancestors or the spirit of support of the natural world. These young artists reinvent these traditional masks in a way, but they do it today with trash because they find more trash and natural materials.”

Published by Actes Sud, Homo Détritus was released in hardcover in November 2022 and is now available for backorder from Bookshop.org. You can see more of these images at Gladieu’s website, and on Instagram.

The post Stephen Gladieu’s New Book Spotlights the Congo’s Protest Art Against Western Trash first appeared on Dornob.

After his formal education was cut short at age 13 so he could support his family, Paboy began work in his uncle’s tailor shop, quickly developing a “keen eye for choosing fabrics and color combinations.” But in 2013, after surviving 22 years under the brutal dictatorship of Yahya Jammeh, he fled his country for the pursuit of freedom and fortune elsewhere. Over the course of two brutal and dangerous years, he journeyed across the desert and Mediterranean Sea, where he finally landed in Italy.

He was immediately placed in a migrant camp, where conditions were so overcrowded and deplorable that it was closed two years later. Paboy was then transferred to a camp in Naples, where his life began to turn around.

Getting a job making tiles and vases at a prestigious majolica factory, the African artist found lodgings with a freelance British journalist, who provided him with a room of his own. However, by the end of 2019, Paboy lost his job when the slow wheels of bureaucracy prevented his Italian asylum papers from being renewed on time.

A few months later, the COVID pandemic kept the world and Paboy at home, where he discovered a sewing machine and some leftover fabric in his host’s apartment. With inspiration from the textile pattern and permission from the journalist, he dusted off his tailoring skills. “My mind went straight to how lovely it would look as a cushion,” he said in an interview with House and Garden.

He posted the resulting throw pillow on a new Instagram account in the middle of 2020, and his work was an immediate hit. Calling his brand “In Casa by Paboy,” the 28-year-old designer has since built a cushion empire that ships out 80 to 100 pillows a month, selling for €100 apiece. His distinctive style and story have also caught the attention of major publications like the Financial Times and Vogue, as well as collaborators and stores interested in stocking his creations.

His design inspiration comes in part from Naples, which he says now feels like home. “The city is very colorful — all the buildings, the paintings. When I was working in the factory, the ladies all made tiles with different, vibrant colors and I was inspired by those combinations, too,” Paboy explains.

Success has come quickly, but it has not always gone smoothly. “Honestly, I haven’t always felt like I wanted to be a business owner,” he said in another interview with Courier. “I was very good at football — that’s what I dreamed of. Being a business owner is something I didn’t have any experience of… Being an immigrant and setting up a business is not easy; it’s quite hard.”

One payoff though, is being able to fully care for his family back home. The artisan happily explains that “Everything I do is for my family, for my sisters; I’m now in a position where I can support them from here.”

Paboy hopes to expand his offerings in the near future, adding: “I don’t want to rely on only cushions. I want to make more homewares — tablecloths, bedsheets, duvet covers.”

Unfortunately, scalability remains an issue for his company. Even after hiring two other African asylum-seekers to help him, demand far outstrips their resources. And because Paboy wants to keep everything handmade for the foreseeable future, he’s currently in talks with immigrant associations in Naples to enlist more help and simultaneously help his fellow refugees into better lives of their own.

The post Paboy Bojang’s Pillows Pay Tribute to Immigrant Ingenuity first appeared on Dornob.

He often pairs traditional materials and techniques with modern innovations, developing a body of work that “empowers and transforms communities through the process of architecture.” Even more importantly, Kéré’s work is designed to serve those who will use it with the utmost respect and consideration.

“I am hoping to change the paradigm, push people to dream and undergo risk,” Kéré says. “It is not because you are rich that you should waste material. It is not because you are poor that you should not try to create quality. Everyone deserves quality, everyone deserves luxury, and everyone deserves comfort. We are interlinked and concerns in climate, democracy, and scarcity are concerns for us all.”

Among Kéré’s most celebrated works are a stunning sculptural timber pavilion called “Xylem” at the Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana and the 2017 Serpentine Pavilion in London, which mimics the shape of a tree with an indigo-blue light steel framed trunk and a timber brise soleil canopy sheltered by clear polycarbonate.

But just as notable are the structures he has built in Africa, including the Gando Primary School in Burkina Faso and the Benin National Assembly. These structures are tailored specifically to the local climate, material availability, traditions, and skills. They’re infused with the regional architectural vernacular and thus feel well-suited to their environments, but they certainly aren’t lacking for decorative flourishes or comforts.

“Francis Kéré’s work is, by its essence and its presence, the fruit of its circumstances,” reads the Pritzker Prize jury statement. “In a world where architects are building projects in the most diverse contexts – not without controversies – Kéré contributes to the debate by incorporating local, national, regional, and global dimensions in a very personal balance of grass roots experience, academic quality, low tech, high tech, and truly sophisticated multiculturalism. His simultaneously local and global perspective goes well beyond aesthetics and good intentions, allowing him to integrate the traditional with the contemporary.”

Drawing inspiration from the simple, one-room structures he grew up using in Burkina Faso, Kéré aims to create spaces imbued with quiet dignity. He has devoted much of his career to designing primary, secondary, and postsecondary educational facilities as well as medical facilities, therefore stabilizing the future of the communities where they’re built.

Sustainability is another major factor in Kéré’s work. Addressing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, the architect, educator, and social activist considers factors like potential reuse of the building materials in the future, and the use of indigenous clay to add thermal mass to his structures, thereby helping them retain cooler air inside naturally. This kind of passive cooling is essential to maintaining the comfort and low operating costs of Kéré’s built works in Africa.

“Francis Kéré is pioneering architecture – sustainable to the Earth and its inhabitants – in lands of extreme scarcity,” said Thomas Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation. “He is equally architect and servant, improving the lives and experiences of countless citizens in a region of the world that is at times forgotten. Through buildings that demonstrate beauty, modesty, boldness, and invention, and by the integrity of his architecture and geste, Kéré gracefully upholds the mission of this Prize.”

The post Francis Kéré Becomes the First Black Architect to Win the Pritzker Prize first appeared on Dornob.

Muriu captures this feeling with an ongoing fine art photography series called “Camo,” in which African women adorned in vivid, eye-popping patterns stand against backdrops of the same pattern. They might be blending in a little bit, but they certainly don’t disappear. Their personalities, architectural hairstyles, and fun accessories demand attention even in the busiest of compositions.

Highlighting the Unique Beauty of Modern Kenya

The Camo series bucks assumptions about modern Kenyan culture while celebrating its history, vibrancy, and uniqueness. It also puts dark-skinned black women front and center, defying a preference for lighter skin that has taken root even in Muriu’s own country. The portraits examine how we can lose our individual identities to the expectations our cultures place on us, yet each of us has own own beautiful qualities that make us stand out.

Camo first began in 2015 when Muriu became fascinated with complex, hypnotic textile patterns, each one chosen for its uniqueness and visual magnetism. The prints themselves almost seem alive. Muriu spends hours sifting through fabric shops in Nairobi looking for the most confusing, loud, and bold fabrics she can find. She realized that placing “camouflaged” models in front of these backdrops drew the eye right to each woman’s face, hair, and hands.

Tradition and Experimentation Come Together

Muriu researches traditional Kenyan hairstyles (the bigger and wilder the better) and finds ways to amplify and exaggerate them. Deliberately pushing back on Western beauty standards that call for sleeker, more “professional” hairstyles, the artist lovingly focuses upon cultural standards of beauty that she worries are being lost.

Upcycled accessories made of “junk” like bottle caps and discarded wire highlight Kenyans’ enterprising nature. Every small detail of each portrait reflects the way young Africans reimagine and reinvent cultural traditions for the modern world.

The full Camo series went on display at the 193 Gallery in Paris in 2021. Muriu sees it as a milestone achievement in her artistic career, and says she’ll continue adding to it forever if she can. “I will always do more,” she says. “A lifetime challenge would be to try and catalogue all of them and become the first modern archive of our hair and our fabric. Why not?”

About Artist Thandiwe Muriu

Muriu first became interested in photography as a 14-year-old growing up in a family full of creatives. One sister was a fashion designer, another a virtuoso pianist. After graduating from business school, she returned to her love of art, and signed her first contract for an international adverting campaign at the age of 23. While her day job keeps her traveling around the world on assignments, her personal work focuses on issues of identity, self-perception, and her African heritage.

Muriu lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya where she teaches photography workshops. She received the 2020 People’s Choice Award for Emerging Photographer of the Year at Photo London.

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Concrete manufacturers run advertisements in these countries professing the superiority of their product, one bearing the tag line “concrete is a strong material for strong men.” Occasional collapses of mud walls during heavy rainfall have influenced opinions as well. But even as villagers express new preferences for concrete over mud, some architects, tribal chiefs, and government officials are working to preserve the use of traditional materials, especially in the face of climate change.

With its high thermal mass, mud is capable of keeping interiors cool even in the hottest desert temperatures. Concrete blocks, on the other hand, allow heat to pass right indoors, where it’s trapped even after outside temperatures cool at night. The materials used to build mud structures are also plentiful, locally available, mostly biodegradable, and virtually free. An annual application of a waterproofing mixture consisting of motor oil, clay, and cow dung keep rain from penetrating the walls, which can be up to three feet thick. Plus, patterns and drawings can be carved into the mud before it cures for a decorative effect.

Some of West Africa’s most stunning vernacular architecture is made of mud. That includes the Great Mosque of Djenne in Mali, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the world’s largest mud brick building, which was designed in the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style. The first mosque on the site was built around the 13th century, and the current one dates to 1907, built by Djenne’s traditional guild of masons. The walls are decorated with bundles of rosier palm sticks, and ceramic half-pipes extend from the roofline to direct rainwater away from the structure.

Other significant mud buildings include the Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso, a series of mud tower houses in northern Togo called Koutammouko, the gate to the Emir’s Palace in Kano, Nigeria, Dogon mud houses tucked into the Bandiagara Escarpment in Mali, Larabanga Mosque in Ghana, and traditionally decorated Hausa structures in Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Benin, as well as other West African countries.

Architect Clara Sawadogo is among those working to make mud popular again, demonstrating through her projects how the traditional materials can be applied to contemporary designs for those who want a more modern appearance. And in cities like Koudougou and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, brand new mud structures are showing off what’s possible. The Burkina Institute of Technology by Francis Kéré (2020), for instance, is made of poured clay and features a secondary facade of eucalyptus for additional passive cooling.

These structures serve as great examples of how vernacular architecture made of sustainable local materials can and should be prioritized over homogenized developments lacking aesthetic and cultural connections to their settings, even in the midst of the global housing crisis. They’re beautiful, inexpensive to build, rooted in local traditions, and well equipped to withstand climate change without the addition of high-cost, energy and resource-intensive modern technologies. There’s a unique version of this kind of architecture almost everywhere on the planet, or the potential to adapt traditional knowledge and skills into new but similar ideas.

The post West Africa’s Traditional Mud Architecture is a Low-Cost Sustainable Marvel first appeared on Dornob.

Nzambi Matee, a 29-year-old entrepreneur and engineer, felt compelled to do something after years of seeing single-use bags littering the streets of Nairobi.

“I was tired of being on the sidelines,” Matee says, adding that “here in Nairobi we generate about 500 metric tons of plastic waste every single day, and only a fraction of that is recycled. Plastic is a material that is misused and misunderstood. The potential is enormous, but it’s afterlife can be disastrous.”

In 2017, Matee quit her job as a data analyst and started experimenting in her mom’s backyard. “I shut down my social life for a year and put all my savings into this,” she notes. “My friends were worried.”

Mixing sand and plastics, she started producing brick-like paver stones. Through trial and error over many months, she was eventually able to determine which types of plastics bound better than others.

Matee studied material science and previously worked in the Kenyan oil industry, after which she won a scholarship to a U.S. social entrepreneurship training program. This opportunity allowed her to further test her component ratios in the University of Colorado Bolder labs.

“Plastic is fibrous in nature, so therefore, the brick ends up having a stronger compression strength,” she explains. And she’s telling the truth, too. Matee’s pavers have a melting point over 662°F, and they’ve been tested to withstand twice the weight of standard concrete bricks.

Her startup company Gjenge Makers Ltd, founded in 2018, uses a mix of plastics for the pavers: high-density polyethelene, commonly found in milk and shampoo bottles; low-density polyethylene, the substance that makes up cereal and sandwich bags; and polypropylene, often used in bottle lids, packaging products, and industrial fabrics. However, they do not use polyethylene terephthalate (PET) from single-use bottles.

Gjenge Makers get most of their material from Kenyan factories. “Companies have to pay to dispose the waste, so we solved their problem. That waste essentially comes for free,” says Matee. They do have to buy some supplemental scraps from recyclers, though.

“So far we have recycled 20 metric tons, and we’re looking to push that value to 50 by the end of next financial year,” she adds. Matee and her team can currently produce roughly 1,500 brick per day, all using machines she designed herself.

The bricks are fully certified by the Kenyan Bureau of Standards and come in a variety of colors, including red, green, blue, brown, and gray. They can be very inexpensively made and priced, with a basic gray brick selling for 850 Kenyan shillings ($7.70) per square meter.

Matee and her company have earned praise from the United National Environmental Program. “We must rethink how we manufacture industrial products and deal with them at the end of their useful life,” says Soraya Smaoun, a UNEP specialist in industrial production techniques. “Nzambi Matee’s innovation in the construction sector highlights the economic and environmental opportunities when we move from a linear economy, where products, once used, are discarded, to a circular one, where products and materials continue in the system for as long as possible.”

As Matee emphasizes, “Plastic waste is not just a Kenya problem, but it’s a worldwide problem.”

The post Kenyan Woman Makes Bricks “Stronger than Concrete” from Recycled Plastic first appeared on Dornob.

Best known for his 2006 hit song, “Smack That,” Aliaune Damala Badara Akon Thiam spent part of his childhood in Senegal before moving to the United States. His philanthropic hands have previously been connected to a solar power project called Akon Lighting Africa, Akoin, a crypto-currency, and a youth center in Mbodiene.

In recent years, he’s been focused on developing a portion of the African countryside into a thriving metropolis — a far cry from the current horse and buggy-dominated landscape. The plan calls for tall, serpentine buildings jutting into the skyline that would provide housing for people of all socio-economic levels, as well as business, service, and entertainment spaces, and of course, an iconic Akon tower as a central focal point. In addition, Dubai-based architect Hussein Bakri has revealed plans for two Akon City resorts, several hotels, a hospital, and a technology park.

Converting the scrub brush farmland into a futuristic utopia is currently estimated to cost $6 billion, but organizers in the area have expressed doubts the project will proceed at all.

“We welcome this project with open arms and pray that everything Akon told us will be realized,” says Magueye Ndao, mayor of Ngueniene, the municipality containing Mbodiene and the other villages where Akon City will be built. Xavier Ricou, an architect and former director at APIX, Senegal’s agency for promoting investment and major projects, shared similar thoughts, explaining: “if history is any guide, they will most likely be let down.” He adds that “During the 15 years or so that I worked at APIX, I saw proposals from people who wanted to make cities all over,” revealing that millions of dollars had already been spent in the planning of cities that were never actually built.

Although some environmental and social impact studies have been done, locals are apprehensive about what Akon City would mean for the marriage between African and Western cultures, leaving many to feel totally detached from the process. They’ve expressed concern over the impact of such a development on the economy of local businesses in the area, and on job opportunities for nearby villagers.

Pape Massamba Thiaw, a municipal councillor and president of the youth commission for Ngueniene, says that “since the project is not 100-percent led by the commune of Ngueniene, there are bound to be fears and worries about it.”

The development is set to be built on unusable farmland plagued by clay and saltwater issues. However, the land that was turned over to the state for future tourism development reportedly changed hands without some of the owners ever being compensated, so even the use of these areas is still in dispute.

Currently, the extent of completion stops at a single rock placed on site as part of a project acknowledgement ceremony in August 2020. But the concept looms, with architect Bakri envisioning the technology forecasted a quarter century from now pulsing through the now vast and barren field.

The post Ultra-Futuristic “Akon City” Planned for Desolate African Coast first appeared on Dornob.

While there may not be any actual science-fictiony teleportation involved here, the concept of melding technology and design to further third-world education is very forward-thinking. Called “Solar Cow,” the initiative has been making formal learning possible for children in the most poverty-stricken regions of Africa since 2018.

Developed by Korean designer Sung Un Chang and her solar firm Yolk, the aim of the program is to decrease child labor rates around the globe by incentivizing poor parents to send their kids to school. According to data from the United Nations education body UNESCO, roughly 262 million children worldwide between the ages of 6 and 17 do not attend school. That works out to one in every five children on the planet.

After looking into the issue, Chang found that most of those children are kept home to help with chores and support the family income. In places like rural Kenya and Tanzania, for example, parents need their children’s help to tend cattle during the day.

“The kids could not come to school because of the cows, and now they can come to school because of a cow — but it’s a solar cow,” she says.

First installed in Pokot, Kenya, where between 40 and 60 percent of residents never complete a single level of education, the Solar Cow is a charging station artfully crafted in bovine shape. Each student attending the school is given a 2,900-mA power Solar Milk battery that plugs into the station’s udder slots and extracts power from the sun. Students then retrieve the fully-charged batteries (holding about $1 worth of electricity) at the end of the instruction day. The charger is then brought home, where it can be used to charge 2G cell phones (adults often have to travel long distances to charge their devices at expensive electronics shops) and also have enough power left to be used as an LED flashlight, providing up to six hours of light each night for the family. As 15 percent of the average Kenyan family’s budget goes to energy costs, these batteries can free up resources, reducing the need for child labor.

Chang realized getting parents on board was the key. “All of this is about how we persuade parents to send their kids to school,” she explains, noting that creating a “tangible” benefit of education was of paramount importance here. “If the value is similar or more, then they’re willing to send their children to school rather than the workplace.”

The idea worked well enough that two more Solar Cows have since been installed: another in Kenya and one in Tanzania. This latest campaign is aimed at putting more in the Zanzibar and Kigoma regions of Tanzania, some of the poorest and least educated parts of the world.

Yolk plans to make the program sustainable by requiring each family to pay $1 a month to allow their kids to charge the batteries at school. That money will make sure the parents have “skin in the game” while also providing funds for system maintenance and the replacement of Solar Milk batteries every two to three years. Additionally, they will generate salaries for local solar technicians to operate and maintain the cows.

Here’s how the new Kickstarter campaign works: Backers can pledge $28 to buy a solar/USB battery that doubles as a cute flashlight. Each purchase will also buy a Solar Milk charger for one child in Africa. Those who choose the Give+data option will get a unique code that corresponds to one of those African chargers. Backers can then log on to Solar Cow’s data site to track how often that battery gets plugged into a Solar Cow, and by extension, how often that specific child attends school. The tracking feature helps provide accountability, allowing backers to see the good their charitable dollars are doing.

At the time of writing this article, the campaign is more than 228 percent funded with about a month left to go.

Chang, whose previous Solar Paper campaign raised more than $1 million, hopes that the success of the Solar Cow initiative will encourage more designers to team up with other industries to solve the world’s problems. She notes that “the synergy of diverse fields such as science, politics, and anthropology when confronted with the intuition and creative perspectives of designers will be very surprising.”

The post These Solar-Powered Flashlights Will Teleport African Children to School first appeared on Dornob.

“Colorama Skatepark,” set in an old 20th-century warehouse renovated by French architect Patrick Bouchain in 2004, is an installation created as part of Lille’s World Capital of Design 2020. Commissioned by La Condition Publique (the cultural institution currently occupying the warehouse), the indoor skatepark fuses the architecture of the space with new ramps and brightly-colored details.

The brick walls are reinvigorated with shoes of peach and pink, overlaid with bold murals in neon green, orange, red, and yellow. The concrete pillars that punctuate the interiors are also colored, making them feel like a more active part of the design of the space. Ilori’s colors and motifs derive, in part, from the details of the building, while the skateable features were developed in collaboration with local skateboarders and Decathlon skateboarding product manager Jean-Philippe Rode.

Those elements include two corner quarter pipes with banked ends, a volcano ramp, and a central hybrid module. All of these obstacles were made using FSC-certified recycled paper from Skatelite, a renowned manufacturer of premium skate ramp surfaces used by pro skaters. If you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of designing a skatepark, using paper for this purpose might sound odd, but Skatelite’s products are weather-resistant and nearly indestructible, designed to deliver a balance of speed and grip.

As you can probably imagine, the way projects like this are carried out has changed substantially due to the pandemic. Ilori participated remotely in the construction process during the coronavirus lockdown, overseeing La Condition Publique’s staff as they built and papered the new indoor skate park.

“It was important for me and La Condition Publique to design a skatepark that was inclusive and not intimidating but inviting for all ages and all levels of skateboarders,” Ilori says. “They really wanted to celebrate one of the different ways La Condition Publique, a cultural venue, can be used to bring people together, and they felt that I could create this experience.”

Colorama aims to engage the growing skater community in Lilles, France, also inviting BMX riders and other urban sports athletes to partake in the fun. Whether they’re engaging in skating, dance, basketball, or parkour, users get to enjoy a highly unique street art-inspired environment. The park opened in September 2020, and in the future, it’ll also host events and classes, including educational and employment opportunities.

“This project also finds its place in la Condition Publique’s will to forge a bond with its neighborhood,” reads the project’s press release. “By inviting neighbors to a warm and family-friendly space dedicated to sports, it allows them to gather together and get to grips with this cultural place, where they may [otherwise] feel as ‘outsiders/outcasts.'”

“La Condition Publique also shelters not less than 20 organizations from cultural and creative sectors and accompanies its neighbors in realizing their projects. In addition to this, it strives to enhance collaboration with the social, urbanistic, and associative actors in Pile, an underprivileged neighborhood in Roubaix where the venue is located. In that respect, la Condition Publique searches to organize rendezvous in various forms in order to generate new dialogs within this community.”

Ilori, who began his practice in 2011 as an upcycled furniture designer, draws many cultural influences together into his trademark visuals, including traditional Nigerian parables and West African fabrics. He likes each piece to tell a story, often bringing “Nigerian verbal traditions into playful conversation with contemporary design.”

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The Warka village lies in a place with no roads and little communication with the outside world. Due to frequent flooding, the territory can be totally inaccessible during the rainy seasons. The innovative new micro-town incorporates several features to support the life and livelihood of the Pygmy culture all year round.

Two Warka Towers provide an alternative source of drinking water for residents by gathering moisture from rain, fog, and dew. “It is a passive structure, it functions only by natural phenomena such as gravity, condensation, and evaporation,” the company website explains. Built from 100-percent recyclable and biodegradable components, the towers should yield between 10 and 20 gallons of potable water each day, depending on atmospheric conditions.

“Warka tower is demonstrating that we can harvest water from the sky, so water doesn’t only come from the ground,” Vittori says. “This not a new invention but an ancient knowhow that we have lost. Looking back, several cultures have been adopting different strategies to collect water in a sustainable way from the air. Warka will also help to rediscover some of these lost traditions, inspiring a new generation of architects to incorporate these techniques in contemporary design.”

The community housing was inspired by ancestral African huts and assembled with native Cameroonian construction methods, employing only locally-sourced wood, bricks, and fibers. Even better, the new dwellings improve upon tradition by adding insulated floors, natural ventilation, and rain-proof roofs.

Before the erection of the Warka village, there were no toilets in the Mvoumagomi range and disease could easily spread through unhygienic practices. Now, compost latrines have been set up to support better sanitation and furnish sustenance for the environment. The liquid human waste is diluted for natural fertilizer, while the solid waste is mixed with soil and dried to create nutrient-rich manure for the Warka garden.

The town’s modular garden is devised to feed the Pygmy people and supply crops to be sold at local markets. It utilizes an efficient irrigation system that pulls water straight from the Warka towers.

Warka Water Inc. got its start after Vittori traveled to the rural high plateau of Ethiopia in February 2012. “I witnessed a dramatic reality: the lack of potable water,” Vittori explains. “…To survive here, women and children walk every day for miles towards shallow and unprotected ponds, where the water is often contaminated with human and animal waste, parasites, and diseases. They collect the water using dry carved gourds and carry the water back in old plastic containers, which are extremely heavy… I made it my mission to find an alternative solution and help these people. This was the genesis of the design of warka tower: an environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable solution for potable water.”

The Cameroonian Warka Village is already operational, with an anticipated completion date of 2022. Warka Water has also finished another community in Ethiopia and has plans for sites in Haiti, Togo, and Colombia.

The post Sustainable Cameroonian Village Harvests Water from the Sky first appeared on Dornob.

Rammed earth is almost as ancient as architecture itself. This construction technique compresses locally available natural raw materials like dirt, clay, chalk, lime, and gravel between flat panels called formwork to produce hard-packed bricks that stand the test of time. Many rammed earth structures still standing today, including the Great Wall of China and the Alhambra in Spain, were built over 1,000 years ago.

The local materials and formwork used give each rammed earth project its own unique look, and the result is just as attractive as it is low-cost and sustainable. The thick walls keep indoor spaces comfortable, even in the hottest, driest climates, and no finishing is needed inside or out.

The practice of building with rammed earth may have fallen out of favor in past decades, but a recent resurgence gives us new examples of what this material can really do. In Accra, Ghana, architecture firm Tzou Lubroth has created a stunning modern rammed earth residence and studio for an artist, incorporating natural ventilation, gallery spaces, a swimming pool, outdoor areas, and views of the sea.

The rammed earth construction lends layered pastel red, pink and beige tones to the two-story live/work complex, making it look like just as much of a work of art as the client’s own creations. Louvered wooden shades complement the natural materials and let in plenty of fresh air. Arched doorways and clumps of desert plants root it in the visuals of its location, while a dramatic shimmering silver staircase connects the private areas to the public ones.

The firm explains that they “were asked by the artist Amoako Boafo to develop a hybrid typology that brings together a home, a painter’s studio, a gallery, and facilities for three artists-in-residence. The project was motivated by the artist’s desire to return to Accra with the mission of bringing a newfound energy to the city’s art scene. A lack of contemporary art venues and opportunities for exchange between local and foreign artists was as important to Mr. Boako as his need to establish his studio in his homeland after long periods of being abroad.”

“The house consists of two volumes interacting through slight shifts in geometry. The artist’s house and studio occupy one volume, while the residences, dining areas, and public gallery occupy the other. At the center of the courtyard, a circular staircase leads from the pool to the public gallery. By hybridizing public and private programs, the house had to become something new, something more that a mere dwelling. Rammed earth walls and galvanized steel platforms and railings combine to form a sculpted environment that is at once rigid yet earthbound and free.”

Loving the look of rammed earth? There’s lots more inspiration where this project came from. DUST Architects completed a gorgeous contemporary desert home surrounded by cacti, complete with a rooftop deck for taking in views of the dramatic landscape. Another modern rammed earth home in New Mexico has a roofline you’d never expect from this type of construction, but the effect feels fun and fresh all the same. And in China, the crumbling remains of a traditional “yaodong” cave house have been transformed with a new rammed earth insert by hyperSity Architects to gorgeous effect.

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If you have a trip to Nairobi coming up any time soon, you’ll find that that best way to fill your stay with the local nature is by visiting the Giraffe Manor, where you can mingle with giraffes all day long, from breakfast straight through dinner. And who knows? You might even meet a giraffe nose-to-nose outside your second-story window.

In fact, you might not get to decide whether you want to get up close and personal, since the giraffes here really seem to own the place. Then again, it is their home that you’re visiting. Indeed, this herd of Rothschild giraffes typically visits the Manor each morning and evening, and it’s not uncommon for one to pop its head into the lodgings in search of a breakfast treat. During the day, they typically move into the area’s surrounding 140 acres of forest.

The giraffes come and go as they please, freely helping themselves to food served in both the second-story dining area and the lower first level. If the windows are open, the friendly creatures will crane their necks to sneak a peek, brushing their faces right up against yours.

Rothschild giraffes faced extinction due to loss of their natural habitats in the mid 1970s. Knowing this, conservationists Betty and Jock Melville coddled the three wild bull giraffes that roamed the grounds around the manor, eventually adding a new baby here and there until the herd began to grow. The Melvilles then donated a portion of the land to the African Fund for Endangered Wildlife, a charity organization they helped found. The on-site Giraffe Center was added for the purpose of allowing Kenyan school children to feed the animals up close as they learned about conservation and ecology. The center also manages a breeding program aimed at increasing the natural Rothschild giraffe population by releasing them back into the wild.

While interacting with the giraffes is an amazing opportunity, the building itself should not be overlooked. Even after changing hands several times, the Giraffe Manor still represents the style and sophistication that throws visitors back into a scene from out of Africa.

The manor was built in 1932 and modeled after a Scottish hunting lodge. Throughout the decades, its owners have worked to maintain the exterior, whose stone facade is cloaked in climbing ivy and set against a backdrop of trees, blending almost seamlessly into the surrounding landscape. Indeed, the building sits on 12 acres of private land, much of which is left to grow naturally.

The interior of the Giraffe Manor is lush and elegant, with flowing draperies and natural elements all throughout. Giraffe decor adorns many walls. The surrounding savannah grassland is represented in the color choices inside the manor, the original work of which has also been meticulously maintained. The boutique hotel offers 12 guest rooms in total, two of which are suites.

Over the years, the hotel, specifically situated in the Langata suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, has become an iconic example of interacting with the wildlife in Africa. And as part of The Safari Collection (a group of upscale travel lodgings), guests can even add a tailor-made safari experience to their visit.

The post The Giraffe Manor Invites Visitors to Eat on the Wild Side first appeared on Dornob.

After years of seeing flip-flop sandals littering the beaches in their area, a group of passionate citizens in Africa decided to do their part, too. Instead of simply picking them up for disposal, though, they used their skills to turn them into a full-fledged sailboat. The FlipFlopi has since become the poster child for a massive campaign against single-use plastics.

The inspiration hit founders Ben Morison, Ali Skanda, and Dipesh Pabari after many years of watching coastal waste increase alongside the development of tourism and commerce in the area. What once was a sleepy fishing region with pristine shores had essentially become a wasteland of debris — so much so that the final assembly of the boat incorporated 10 tons of plastic waste gathered from roadsides and beaches in Kenya, including 30,000 flip flops.

The FlipFlopi is the first-ever dhow to be built from 100-percent recycled plastic, and while the materials may not be traditional, the construction certainly is. The entire vessel was assembled on Kenya’s Lamu Island by a team of local shipbuilders who adhere to age-old traditional Swahili methods.

As if its being made entirely of flip-flops wasn’t enough, the FlipFlopi has already proven its seaworthiness with a 300-mile trip to raise awareness about waste and the environmental impact of human activities. Setting sail on January 23, 2019, chief boat-builder and captain Ali Skanda and his crew took it from Lamu Island to Zanzibar in neighboring Tanzania over a two-week period. The boat’s colorful, eye-catching design piqued interest and evoked questions all along the trip, which, when paired with the crew’s participation in several community beach cleanups and meetings with both students and political leaders in support of their cause, proved the entire project a great success.

What began as a dreamy design idea took two years to develop into The FlipFlopi, but after the overwhelming response to the initial campaign, the group is now setting their sights on building an even bigger vessel. In the next year, they plan to complete the KUBWA: a boat capable of traveling around the whole world.

By creating a bigger boat, the FlipFlopi team hopes to unite citizens, governments, and corporations outside of Africa in the goal of eliminating single-use plastics in the future and cleaning up the mess they’ve helped make thus far. They particularly want to inspire schoolchildren to serve as the driving force for the future of conservation and environmentalism while encouraging policy makers to initiate contemporary change in their respective communities.

The post All Aboard The FlipFlopi, the First Dhow Sailboat Built from Recycled Plastic Waste first appeared on Dornob.

Online British retail giant ASOS is most commonly known for it’s affordable designer garms, vibrant ad campaigns, and free delivery around the world — all of which have helped the brand successfully storm the world of e-commerce fashion. With easy-to-navigate features that bring a scarily immersive experience to the digital arena, it’s hard to imagine that a company like this would also be striving to make the world at large a better place.

Nonetheless, ASOS is now using its name and reputation to advocate a more responsible approach to consumerism. After announcing a collaboration with GLAAD and the launch of a sustainable fashion training program, the ASOS Foundation and SOKO Community Trust are introducing The Kujuwa Initiative.

Translating to “The Knowledge Initiative,” this project has been created to support the young women of Kenya’s Kasigua region, providing health education to those who are often forced to miss school during their menstrual cycles due to a lack of accessible feminine hygiene products. SOKO is a Kenyan clothing manufacturer that has been working alongside ASOS to develop reusable sanitary pads for these women, all of which can be easily washed and have been handmade by local seamstresses. Made from the waste leftovers from ASOS’ “Made In Kenya” collections, these pads come in kits that also contain two pairs of cotton briefs, a bar of soap for cleanliness, an instructional pamphlet, and a waterproof wash bag. Each pad boasts a removable liner and is capable of lasting for an impressive three years.

The kits are currently being distributed to the young women of Kasigua in the hope that they will improve their overall quality of life and allow them to continue their education uninterrupted going forward. The companies also hope that the pads will continue to garner local interest, eventually generating a steady source of income for the members of SOKO’s Stitching Academy in an eco-friendly, humanitarian fashion. On top of all this, the initiative hopes to grant other schools in the region access to the WASH Project, through which toilet facilities and water tanks are set up in the areas most in need of them. These new facilities will come as a big relief to the young women in these schools, many of whom are currently forced to attend to their menstrual care in public due to a lack of restrooms with functioning doors.

900 girls from six schools across Kenya will receive the “Keep It Together (KIT)” bags, which will hopefully help ensure that they are no longer placed at a disadvantage simply for being women. With any luck, the sanitary pads will help these women realize their true potentials and inspire them to create similar products to help out their fellow human beings.

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Set on the hills surrounding Cape Town, South Africa, this home is all about its exterior, from the lush landscape to the huge swimming pool which shapes the rest of the abode. But that doesn’t mean the expansive, day-lit interior spaces are any less spectacular: especially a surprise on the lower level.

Underwater spa and pool viewing areas migrate up to a flexible-walled poolside deck that can be opened to the elements, and living spaces overlooking all of the above (or rather: below). Wood slats provide shade without interfering with views.

Metropolis Design made most levels open directly onto surrounding lawns, giving each room the sense of being connected to the outdoors both visually and physically.

“The building is conceived of as a hovering set of abstract sculptural elements, lightly suspended over a large waterscape, which forms an extended terrace on the mountainside,” say the architects.

“The inter-penetration of two simple forms, in combination with the staggering of the floor plane, allows a surprising amount of volumetric complexity and spatial interplay in and around the building. Transparency, an apparent lack of structural support, and the gaps between elements, dematerialize the building and create a presence in the landscape which is of nature, despite its abstraction.”

“Water as a rejuvenative element, constitutes the primary experience of the building and provides its symbolic language. The guest accommodation block hovers dramatically over the water and projects into space towards the mountain and sea. It shelters the dining area, itself submerged below water level. Pool decks are arranged as islands in a sea of water, connected by a bridge. The underwater spa with large viewing windows into the pool has a sense of stillness and mystery.”

“The ground floor opens up entirely and entrances the experience of the building as a light platform in a vast landscape.”

The post Hillside House in Africa with an Underwater Viewing Room first appeared on Dornob.

There is no solid line between truth and fiction in architecture, as these fantastic-but-realistic rural retreats illustrate with beautiful balance. None is purely a reflection of regional materials or local techniques, but neither are they far-fetched fictions divorced from time and place.

“Meaning harmony or understanding in Kiswahili, Elewana alludes to a balance sought between all the elements expected by the most discerning traveler and the exquisite but fragile ecosystems of the African bush. A balance between people and nature, tourism and conservation, between extremes of comfort and style and the raw, often brutal, beauty of the worlds greatest wildlife experience.”

A rich dark-wood theme (hinting at earth, growth and perhaps roasted beans) permeates one residence set alongside the largest coffee plantation.

Another retreat that looks out on the Indian Ocean has elements of both East African and Mediterranean building traditions, full of organic shapes and natural materials that perfectly complement their environments.

A series of tropical tree houses (above) take a low-impact approach, raised above the ground and set inside a private gaming reserve to preserve but allow direct experience of the wilds.

Meanwhile (below) along the Serengeti sits something that looks straight out of the history books, or an African Safari-themed film, but is not so overdone so as to feel completely false in context. If you stay here, you’ll definitely get the full experience, ambiance and all.

There is no particular moral to the story of these resort residences, save the obvious: the places are pretty and various architectures are engaged with their environments. They offer luxury in an unusual blend with direct experience, but are not ever made nor meant to be truly authentic, either. Sometimes, simply balancing the desires of someone seeking a dream vacation against climactic and local fact can be enough – at least for a temporary retreat.

The post Boutique African Lodges Boast Local Luxury first appeared on Dornob.