The goal for the design of a model arts village in Ghana, Africa was to be easily built from local materials and local labor at a low cost with a budget of $42,000-$62,000. For final year students, Mihai Dorcu, Stefan Padurariu and Vlad Burlacu, their challenge was to provide a comfortable and multi-use space for the international arts community in the rural part of the country. They would go on to achieve this by tapping into local resources for sustainable development to integrate art into architecture for a more sustainable future. More images and description after the break.
On 10 acres, the design would be for all of the following: Multipurpose Arts Center, Residential Courtyard that sleeps 21 persons, Community Kitchen, Courtyard for arts studios and a Recreational Sports Ground as a part of the Arts Village. The production budget of up to $62,000 includes materials, labor, and infrastructure.
The concept is based on a fractalic reproduction of the traditional site occupation. Sustainability, geographic and climatic condition (the Harmattan wind), budget, eco-friendly, smart design, this are the main creating forces forming the concept of the project.
Understanding the building technique and the material possibilities of the region, architecture brings life to a hybrid form of local understanding and design vision.Care to the embedded way of life and problems that may appear where essential drives for the architectural vision of the team to bend the usual habit of imposing the design to a place into a reinterpretation of the existing one attitude.
Materials, geometry, textures and manner of positioning are elements for modeling space that we used to give form to our understanding of the contest requirements and other possible evolutions and implications of the project.
