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1st Prize - 2nd Prize - 3rd Prize - Honourable Mentions - Special Mentions - Finalists1st Prize
AFRDOU0501943Afroditi Ioannidou , Vladimir Gligorovski from Greece
"COMMUNITY CENTER IN CASAMANCE — A SHADED LANDSCAPE FOR ALL Concept: The Impluvium Reinterpreted In the Casamance, the impluvium house is organized around a central open space where rainwater collects, light filters inward, and daily life gathers. This project reinterprets that typology — not as a single dwelling, but as a community center that belongs to the village first, and to specific programs second. The building follows a semi‑circular arc, elongated and gently twisted. From left to right, the plan unfolds as: covered entrance, library, study area, a large central community space, workshop, storage, and WC. Rather than a closed corridor, the arc creates a natural flow — indoor, semi‑indoor, and outdoor spaces intertwine. Every space opens toward a central outdoor amphitheatre, a graveled stage that becomes the heart of collective life. The roof unifies everything. It is the gesture that makes the building legible, welcoming, and generous. A Roof That Is the Main Public Space The roof is double‑pitched, rising higher on one side and lowering toward the other. The central ridge is slightly elevated; the two ends almost touch the ground. This organic movement regulates sun, privacy, and hierarchy of use. The entrance is open and high — an arrival point. The library and workshop protrude slightly from under the roof, framing the central space. The WC is tucked low, almost invisible. But the roof is not merely a cover. It is an active public space in itself. Even when no programmed activity takes place, the shade beneath the roof is always available — for elders playing chess, for children gathering after school, for anyone needing a cool place to sit, talk, or use the latrine. The center does not demand a purpose to be useful. It exists as part of the village and part of the landscape — a shaded threshold between the domestic and the communal. Structure and Assembly: Bamboo, Air, and Light The roof is carried by a bamboo structure. Double columns on each side support paired beams that meet in a central V configuration. A double thatch layer — straw under metal cladding — provides thermal insulation, fire protection, and natural ventilation. A deliberate height shift between the two sides of the pitched roof allows hot air to escape and daylight to enter. Assembly process: Bamboo is harvested locally, then treated against insects and fungus using a borax/boric acid solution (or traditional boiling where available). All joints are lashed with polypropylene rope and reinforced with galvanized wire — no metal brackets required. The thatch is tied to secondary bamboo purlins using galvanized wire and large curved needles. Metal sheets are then screwed onto the thatch layer, creating a hybrid roof that breathes while remaining waterproof. The roof breathes. Hot air rises and exits at the ridge; cooler air is drawn from below. The space stays shaded and comfortable without mechanical ventilation. Walls: Rammed Earth, Independent and Tactile The rammed earth walls are structurally independent of the bamboo frame. They are arranged as five enclosed volumes along the arc: library, study area, workshop, storage, and WC. Between them lie the covered community spaces. Assembly process: Locally sourced laterite earth is mixed with sand, small laterite aggregates, and a minimal percentage of cement for stabilization (optional). The mix is compacted in layers inside wooden formwork made from white wood planks. Once the formwork is removed, the walls reveal their characteristic horizontal striations — a texture that is both beautiful and expressive of the construction method. This independence allows maximum flexibility. Shutters and doors made of bamboo can be opened entirely, turning the whole center into a single, pavilion‑like space for festivals or large gatherings. Or they can be closed, creating quiet, private rooms for smaller groups. The earth itself carries the warm, reddish tone of Casamance soil. In places, diamond‑shaped openings are carved through the thickness of the walls — a kind of moucharabieh that filters light, allows cross‑ventilation, and gives privacy while maintaining visual connection to the outside. Water: Collected in Plain Sight The thickness of the WC volume hides a simple gutter system. Rainwater is collected from the roof and channeled to handwashing stations. The central outdoor amphitheatre is covered in laterite gravel, which acts as a natural infiltration basin — an extra layer of passive water management. In a region with a distinct rainy season, every drop collected is a resource. Scale and Sequence The arc shape creates a progressive sequence. From the covered entrance terrace — which can extend the library for exhibitions or meetings — the visitor moves through the library, study area, central community space, workshop, storage, and WC. From any point along the arc, you see the central outdoor space. During a village festival, benches and seats fill all the covered spaces, and everyone faces the center — like an amphitheatre that is also a room. A Place for everyone. This is not a single‑purpose building. It is not a school, a library, a market, or a festival ground — it is all of those when needed, and a shaded place to exist when not needed. The semi‑circular form does not enclose; it invites. It brings the landscape in, and it extends the village outward. The roof is a landmark, a shelter, and an open hand. Whether for a child studying, a neighbour washing hands, a storyteller performing, or a football match watched together — this center belongs to everyone, every day, without asking for a reason. In Casamance, shade is hospitality. This building offers both."
2nd Prize
MARSKA0717529Project by Marta Kuczynska , Jakub Czak from Poland
"The Community Center has been conceived as a response to the social, educational, and cultural needs of a rural community in southern Senegal. More than a building, it is envisioned as a catalyst for social development, collective identity, and community resilience. The project creates a safe, inclusive, and multifunctional environment where people of all ages can learn, gather, share experiences, preserve traditions, and actively shape their future together. Designed as a humanitarian self-construction initiative, the center relies on simple building methods, locally available materials, and traditional craftsmanship. This approach allows local residents to participate in the construction process, strengthening their sense of ownership while ensuring that the project remains affordable, sustainable, and rooted in local knowledge. The architectural concept is based on a clear and rational organization of functions within a simple rectangular volume. The layout reflects the daily rhythms, traditions, and social structure of rural Senegalese life. The building is divided into distinct functional zones while maintaining strong connections between them. The educational area includes classrooms dedicated to learning, vocational training, literacy programs, and community development initiatives. Complementing these spaces is a library that serves as a place for knowledge exchange, self-education, and lifelong learning. Adjacent to the educational zone is a multifunctional hall designed to host community meetings, cultural events, workshops, awareness campaigns, and public discussions. Its flexible nature allows it to accommodate a wide variety of activities and changing community needs. Recognizing the importance of spirituality in local culture, the project also incorporates a dedicated prayer and reflection space. This quiet area respects local traditions and provides a place for contemplation and personal reflection. At the heart of the project lies a large semi-open gathering space protected from the intense African sun. This shaded area serves as the social center of the complex, hosting daily encounters, informal conversations, community assemblies, celebrations, and collective activities. Acting as an extension of the public realm, it creates a welcoming environment that encourages interaction and participation. A defining architectural feature of this space is a system of large pivoting panels that can open or close the side elevations according to weather conditions and user needs. These movable elements allow the gathering space to function either as a fully open pavilion or as a more protected enclosure. They enhance natural ventilation while providing shelter from direct sunlight and seasonal rains, creating a comfortable and climate-responsive environment. The pivoting panels also celebrate the region’s cultural heritage. They are handcrafted using traditional weaving techniques passed down through generations. The process begins with the harvesting of natural grasses and palm leaves, which are cleaned and dried under the African sun. The fibers are then dyed using natural pigments derived from local plants, tree bark, and minerals before being woven into durable panels featuring distinctive patterns and textures. By integrating these handcrafted elements into the architecture, the project transforms traditional craftsmanship into an active component of the building itself. The workshop zone further supports education, local production, and entrepreneurship. Designed as a flexible space, it can function as one large workshop or be divided into three smaller rooms, allowing multiple activities to take place simultaneously. This adaptability supports vocational training, craft production, and small-scale business development. Supporting functions are concentrated within a dedicated technical zone containing male and female sanitary facilities and storage spaces. The clear separation of service functions ensures efficient operation while maintaining the accessibility of the primary community areas. A key organizational feature of the project is the external circulation corridor running along the building’s longer façade. This strategy allows independent access to different functional zones and enables multiple groups to use the center simultaneously without disturbing one another. Educational programs, workshops, community meetings, cultural events, and prayer can therefore occur at the same time, ensuring continuous and diverse use of the facility. The construction system has been carefully designed to balance simplicity, durability, and environmental performance. The walls are built from locally produced earth bricks, a low-carbon material that provides thermal mass and helps maintain comfortable indoor temperatures. In selected areas, perforated brick patterns improve natural ventilation and create dynamic patterns of light and shadow within the interior. The roof structure is composed of bamboo beams assembled into a lightweight truss system. Bamboo was chosen for its availability, renewability, and excellent structural properties. The trusses support a roof made of smooth metal sheets curved into gentle arches between the structural frames. This form efficiently protects the interior from heavy seasonal rainfall while creating a distinctive architectural identity. The roof also acts as an environmental tool. Its structure slopes toward the entrance area, directing rainwater to surrounding planted zones. During the rainy season, collected runoff naturally irrigates vegetation, improving the microclimate, supporting biodiversity, and reducing water waste. Through its simple architecture, local materials, traditional craftsmanship, and climate-responsive design, the Community Center becomes more than a physical structure. It serves as a platform for education, cultural preservation, entrepreneurship, and social cohesion, a place where traditions are celebrated, opportunities are created, and the future of the community is built together."
3rd Prize
KARLAR1995123Project by Karol Eliana Cuellar Narváez , Jhuliana Giraldo , Juan Sebastian Piedrahita , Juan Santiago Uribe , Oscar Valencia from Colombia
"Invisible Architectures: Natural Intelligence Emerging from Place The project begins with a question: what can be learned from the intelligence already embedded in a landscape before any building arrives? In a territory where resources are finite and climate conditions demand precise responses, this proposal seeks to reinterpret an ancestral wisdom that, long before any designed intervention, had already produced efficient, resilient, and ecologically connected shelters. Inspiration comes from the invisible architecture of the earth itself. Just as certain species excavate curved refuges to protect themselves from heat, preserve energy, and maintain habitable conditions, the building is conceived as an extension of the landscape rather than an imposition upon it. Its footprint emerges from a series of curved excavations forming a crescent, a half-moon carved into the ground that becomes the founding gesture of the entire project. This crescent is subdivided into paired modules separated by open patios. These courtyard voids serve a double purpose: they draw natural light and cross-ventilation deep into each space, and their stepped earthen edges become productive surfaces where the community can cultivate crops. The excavation that makes the building also makes a garden and a protected public agora, a gathering crack in the earth shielded from the region's intense heat waves by the very mass of soil that surrounds it. Light enters not only laterally through the patios but also from above through polycarbonate skylights that allow diffuse, thermally controlled zenithal illumination throughout the day. The wall system is composed of three complementary materials, each responding to a distinct structural and environmental role. The primary enclosure is tapia, rammed earth built using the red laterite soil extracted from the site itself. This technique is deeply artisanal, requiring manual labor, local knowledge, and no industrial inputs. The earth removed to form the excavation becomes the very material that closes the spaces: an act of radical circularity. Alongside the tapia walls, concrete retaining walls manage the lateral pressures of the embedded sections and incorporate a drainage filter system that channels rainwater away from the foundations, preventing moisture accumulation in the earthen elements. The third wall type is stone with electrowelded mesh, a non-permanent and adaptable system directly linked to the project's future expansion modules. Because this wall can be removed or reconfigured without affecting the primary structure, it allows spaces to grow or contract as the community's needs evolve over time, making adaptability a material condition of the building rather than an afterthought. The roof is a tire-lightened concrete slab whose weight reduction is achieved through the inclusion of recycled tires as permanent formwork voids. Waste materials that would otherwise accumulate in the territory are given a new structural purpose, reducing concrete volume while embedding a principle of reuse directly into the building's primary element. The slab is exposed to the landscape and, over time, the intention is that vegetation will gradually colonize its surface, allowing the roof to slowly blend into its surroundings, not as a designed green roof but as a natural process of the building becoming part of its place. This slab is carried by columns of Bambú Guadua filled internally with concrete to enhance their compressive capacity, converting each column into a composite dowel element. The columns embedded within the tapia walls work in direct integration with the earth mass. Along the building's perimeter, external grouped columns formed by four Bambú Guadua shafts braced with two diagonal bambú riostras form compact structural clusters that support the roof overhangs and create deep shade for the patios and access routes below. Enclosure at the upper level, between the roof slab and the tapia walls, is completed with Local Bamboo Fence panels and timber elements of varying dimensions selected to minimize off-cuts and material waste. The carpentry system adapts its member sizes to the available lengths of each wood species, so that the joinery logic itself becomes a response to territorial material availability. Polycarbonate panels at the skylights filter solar radiation while admitting clean, non-glare natural light into the buried spaces, supporting passive thermal comfort without mechanical systems. Spatial organization across the crescent follows a clear programmatic sequence. The Community Area anchors the central node around the landmark tree, which, as in many West African traditions, defines the primary gathering place, the site of memory, exchange, and collective life. Radiating from this center, the Creative Workshop and Study Area / Library occupy the upper arc; the Educational Area and Service Area anchor the eastern wing; the Outdoor Area extends the project into the productive landscape; and the stone-with-mesh modules along the perimeter allow for Future Expansion as community needs evolve. The central tree is not a decorative gesture but a structural principle. The entire spatial network is organized around its presence, reinforcing the cultural logic that public life in this region is organized under, and in relation to, living vegetation. The architecture does not compete with this; it frames it. Passive environmental performance is achieved through the combined action of thermal mass in the tapia walls, deep shadow from the overhangs, cross-ventilation through the paired patio system, and the cooling effect of the half-moon excavation itself. No mechanical conditioning is required. Every architectural decision responds to a logic of resource optimization, minimizing consumption while maximizing environmental and spatial performance. The project understands sustainability not as a technical parameter but as a cultural one. By using materials and construction techniques embedded in the territory, by engaging local labor in processes that transmit knowledge through making, and by organizing collective space around the living elements that communities already recognize as significant, the building becomes a tool for strengthening collective identity. It does not import a system; it amplifies what is already present. This is, in essence, a proposal built on synthesis: a single clear idea, that the most intelligent architecture is the one that emerges from the ground as if it had always been there, applied with material honesty, spatial generosity, and deep respect for the life of the place."
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