Architecture & Identity Center for Community Empowerment
Ziniare is a neighborhood located in Burkina Faso (a landlocked country in West Africa), going through social and ecological challenges dues to poverty and the continuous impact of colonization and globalization. This project aims to provide the Burkinabé communities with a center to educate and empower them through cultural and profitable activities. This center would also foster tourists’ and visitors’ cultural awareness through community engagement activities. This project is a catalyst for community empowerment, equity, and environmental justice through its sustainable features and community programs (community garden, cultural activities, promotion of vocational training in the school curricula). Using the local material and providing sanitation, water storage systems (water tower, water ponds) for rainwater collection and supply, and community garden, this project aims to be economical and profitable to the local communities. It also reduces the cost of transportation of materials and solves the issues related to the precarity of essential resources (water, food, sanitation), and creates job opportunities for the local communities. This project creates an adaptive architecture structure to the tropical climate, uses design to create an inclusive society, provides a network of public gathering spaces to create an inclusive society.
Advisers/Committee
