Gando Teachers' Housing / Kéré Architecture

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Text description provided by the architects. The teachers' houses were designed to attract teachers out to the countryside, as well as to promote the use of earth as a sustainable and durable building material. The houses were realized as a series of adaptable modules, each of comparable size to the traditional round huts typically found in this region. Single modules can be combined in various ways into a larger composite whole. The simplicity of the design and minimal use of bought materials means that it can easily be adopted by the villagers. The six houses for teachers and their families are arranged in a wide arc to the south of the school complex. This curvilinear layout is not only beautiful but is also reminiscent of a traditional Burkinabé compound. The roofs are barrel vaults constructed from stabilized earth blocks. This construction method, previously unheard of in this region, makes use of local resources and is climatically efficient. To protect the building from rising damp, the 40cm thick adobe walls stand on a foundation of cast in-situ cement and granite stones. The villagers produced around 15,000 blocks, each 40x20x10cm, at a rate of between 600 and 1,000 a day.