Archinect - News

MIT team tests open-source cooling chamber using 75% less energy than refrigerated cold rooms

2023-07-27T11:18:00-04:00

MIT researchers have published details of a new open-source forced-air evaporative cooling chamber. Described as being less expensive than refrigerated cold rooms, the chamber is intended to offer accessible cold storage for smallholder farmers, as well as significantly reduce post-harvest waste in hot and dry climates.

The chamber, which can be housed in a used shipping container and powered by either grid electricity or solar panels, has a capacity of 168 produce crates. The design uses industrial fans to draw in hot, dry air, which is passed through a porous wet pad. This creates cool, humid air that is directed through crates of produce, allowing rapid cooling. The air is then directed through the raised floor and to a channel between the insulation and the exterior container wall, where it flows to the exhaust holes near the top of the side walls.

The project was led by MIT Professor Leon Glicksman of the Building Technology Program within the Department of Architecture and Res...

Francis Kéré's latest project brings a termite-inspired design to the Kenyan lowlands

2021-07-01T14:56:00-04:00

A new polytechnic training campus has sprung up in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, standing out in the sprawling lowlands region thanks to three terracotta-colored ventilation towers that took their inspiration from termite colonies in the growing East African technology hub.

Image © Kéré Architecture

Located on the banks of Lake Turkana, the new Startup Lions campus will provide education and jobs training for young Kenyans, the largest demographic group driving population growth in the country expected to double in size by 2050.

Image © Startup Lions

Kéré Architecture is responsible for the campus plan, which includes housing and workstation spaces for 200 students at the ICT facility. Outdoor classrooms shaded by a grove of pergolas and the profile of thee large cooling towers that will mitigate the Valley’s extreme heat and harmful desert sand, making learning easier in a scheme aimed at collaboration.

Image © Kéré Architecture

The German-based firm has been very active in African dev...

Kenyan start-up founder uses plastic to make bricks stronger than concrete

2021-02-09T12:24:00-05:00

Materials engineer Nzambi Matee heads a recent start-up called Gjenge Makers, which creates low-cost lightweight building materials from recycled plastic and sand. Beginning with pavers, the company has introduced a product that is stronger and more flexible than concrete, heightening its durability and diminishing its maintenance costs.

A Young Champion of the Earth 2020 Africa winner, Matee wants a future where the perpetual growth of plastic waste in Africa can be utilized to enrich society.

First glimpse of Daniel Libeskind's design for Ngaren: Museum of Humankind in Kenya

2019-05-14T17:12:00-04:00

Studio Libeskind unveiled their design for the proposed Ngaren: Museum of Humankind in Loodariak, Kenya. Commissioned by Dr. Richard Leakey, a renowned Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician, the museum will be the first center of its kind that is dedicated to the research, discovery, and exploration of over 2 million years of human history. It'll also showcase Dr. Leakey's life work of fossil discoveries that have helped reveal the history of human evolution.

Working with local Kenyan architects, Studio Libeskind is overseeing the design and construction of Ngaren. The museum will emerge from within the dramatic landscape of Rift Valley, where Kamoya Kimeu — a member of a team led by Dr. Leakey — first made the significant discovery of Turkana Boy, which is the most complete early-human skeleton ever found by far.

Image courtesy of Studio Daniel Libeskind.

Described by Studio Libeskind as a vertical stalactite, the museu...

Roeoesli & Maeder Architects team up with local Kenyan builders to complete the new Swiss Embassy in Nairobi

2018-07-26T12:17:00-04:00

Having to work through a flurry of logistical challenges from 3,700 miles away, Lucerne-based Roeoesli & Maeder Architects (or ro.ma) led an international design team to successfully complete the new Swiss Embassy in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. The architects describe the design as “an appropriate representation of Switzerland”, while also incorporating local Kenyan building practices and the skills of local companies. Roeoesli & Maeder won the commission in an open competition in 2011.

During the construction phase, Roeoesli & Maeder couldn't spontaneously drop by the site, so they observed the project through only photos. “Building was often done by ‘trial and error’. In other words, they build something (which does not necessarily have to correspond with the plans) and ask whether or not it is OK; if the answer is no, then it is demolished and a new attempt is made,” they explain.

Photo: Iwan Baan.

The exposed concrete building has an earthy red dye whose color...

Check out this eye-candy architecture from Africa

2017-08-31T12:45:00-04:00

In this round-up of notable architecture in Africa, Wired takes a closer look at projects from Morocco to South Africa, including the Lideta Mercato in Ethiopia by Xavier Vilalta and the Bosjes Chapel by Steyn Studio. As the piece notes, "Contemporary African architecture is extremely varied: it ranges from sustainable rural developments to luxury apartments and offices; from schools and hospitals to swanky safari lodges; and from huge infrastructure projects to makeshift improvisations. In all of these styles is a sensitivity to local traditions combined with on-the-ground ingenuity." It's also quite visually arresting.

Lideta Mercato by Xavier Vilalta. Image: Gonzalo Guajardo

Shigeru Ban is building shelters for a Kenyan refugee settlement

2017-07-20T13:14:00-04:00

Due to the large influx of refugees, sheet walls of many temporary houses have begun to wear out. And there are other major constraints. There’s low water supply, deforestation, and extremely hot temperatures, and a rainy season which often results in heavy flooding. Plus Kalobeyei remote location creates many obstacles. There are no commercial flights to the area, and it can take up to 3 days to get there by road for the capital, Nairobi, where some materials may have to be sourced from.

Shigeru Ban has signed an agreement with UN-Habitat to design up to 12,000 new homes in the Kalobeiyei refugee settlement site in Northern Kenya. Commissioned in response to the settlement’s rapid growth, which is expected to outnumber its original capacity of 45,000 within a year, the new housing will need to be a replicable model adaptable to the influx of refugees fleeing violence and climate change in South Sudan and Somalia.

"The key thing will be to design and construct shelter where no or little technical supervision is required,” noted Ban, “and use materials that are locally available and eco-friendly. It’s important that the houses can be easily maintained by inhabitants.”

"Making Cities Together," a sustainable urban future conference, to be held in Kenya

2017-04-04T18:43:00-04:00

What's the most efficient, ethical, and sustainable way to remake public spaces? If you're in Nariobi, Kenya this May 3-4th, you'll have the opportunity to answer that question by attending the "Making Cities Together - The City We Need through Safe, Inclusive and Accessible Public Spaces" conference as put on by The Urban Thinkers Campus in collaboration with Project for Public Spaces, UN-Habitat and Placemakers, KUWA - Urban Spaces by People, and Architects Without Borders. Keynote speakers include PK Das, Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana and Michelle Provoost. Here are the full details, courtesy of the original press release:

The Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) model is an initiative of UN-Habitat’s World Urban Campaign, conceived in 2014 as an open space for critical exchange, promoting sustainable urbanization across the globe. In order to implement the New Urban Agenda after Habitat III in Quito in 2016, the UTC 2.0 will be action-oriented by focusing on developing action plans and implem...

Kenya moves to shut down Dadaab, the world's biggest refugee camp

2016-05-11T18:25:00-04:00

Kenya has vowed to close the world’s biggest refugee camp within a year and send hundreds of thousands of Somalis back to their war-torn homeland or on to other countries, a plan decried by aid and human rights groups as dangerous, illegal and impractical. Kenya says it needs to close the sprawling Dadaab camp, home to 330,000 mostly Somali refugees, to protect the country’s security after a string of terror attacks by al-Shabaab.

With most of Europe and the Middle East grappling with an unprecedented refugee crisis, it's easy to lose sight of the millions of other displaced peoples around the world. But the largest population of refugees isn't in Germany, Sweden, or France.

Rather, with a population of 329,811 refugees, primarily Somali, the refugee camp complex in Dadaab, Kenya is the largest in the world. Now, the Kenyan government is moving to shut it down.

In related news:

This month Archinect is focusing on socially-aware projects as part of our special theme for May, Help. Have projects of your own that are oriented towards creating a more equitable and livable society? Submit to our open call before Sunday, May 22.

Experimenting with a universal basic income in Nairobi

2016-04-19T14:56:00-04:00

In the old days of policymaking by aphorism—give a man a fish, feed him for a day!—simply handing money to the poor was considered an obviously bad idea. How naïve—you can’t just give people money. They’ll stop trying! They’ll just get drunk! The underlying assumption was that the poor weren’t good at making decisions for themselves: Experts had to make the decisions for them. As it turns out, that assumption was wrong.

"[...] GiveDirectly, has decided to try to permanently end extreme poverty across dozens of villages and thousands of people in Kenya by guaranteeing them an ongoing income high enough to meet their basic needs—a universal basic income, or basic income guarantee."

[Update: according to GiveDirectly, while their pilot project will likely be in East Africa, near their current projects, it will not be in Nairobi.]

For more on the growing conversation around universal basic incomes, check out past Archinect coverage:

Win "African Modernism", a book that investigates nation building in five African countries

2016-01-06T14:16:00-05:00

Several African countries gained hard-fought independence from their colonizers during the 1950s and 1960s, and one way the countries expressed their new national identities was through architecture. The book African Modernism delves into this relationship between architecture and the complexities of nation building, particularly in Ghana, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Zambia.

Edited by architect Manuel Herz and published to accompany the Vitra Design Museum's "Architecture of Independence" exhibition, the hefty 640-page book features 103 buildings with brief description texts, images, site plans, floor plans, and sections, as well as significant photo contributions from Iwan Baan and Alexia Webster — who each documented the buildings in their current state. The book also features essays that focus on different aspects and topics regarding post-colonial Africa, which are illustrated with images and documents. If you're in Chicago, the Architecture of Independence exhibition wil...

Mastering behavioral master planning: inside The Global Studio

2015-10-08T17:07:00-04:00

For his master's architecture thesis, Geoff Piper proposed reorganizing a Kenyan village with an estimated 70% HIV infection rate so that instead of being isolated in their post-colonial individual land plots, people would regularly cross paths. "There was a funeral every few days," Piper explains, "because for people living in these separate plots, it wasn't easy to grasp the extent of the [HIV] problem." By reorganizing the village to create more frequent public meetings, Piper hoped to raise awareness and stop the spread of the disease. A little over a decade later, Piper is now one of the six principal members of The Global Studio, a collaborative design-build organization that teams with non-profits to master plan settlements around the world. The Global Studio's expertise isn't just technical: it's the rare and difficult art of working successfully with people, whether it's the particular culture of non-profits, tenant farmers, or savvy village teens.

"We're willing and try ver...

SelgasCano design pavilion for Africa in Denmark

2015-07-14T13:37:00-04:00

Hot young Spanish architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano of SelgasCano have designed a pop-up exhibition pavilion for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's latest exhibition, Africa: Architecture, Culture, Identity. Made of low-cost materials, such as scaffold poles and plastic sheets, which the architects have jazzed up inspired by traditional sub-Saharan settlements, the pavilion is due to travel to Kenya. The show in leafy Humlebaek near Copenhagen closes at the end of September.

SelgasCano's airy, bright and colorful pavilions are a sought-after commodity this summer: less than a month ago, the practice unveiled its completed design for the 2015 Serpentine Pavilion in London.

To learn more about the Africa: Architecture, Culture, Identity exhibition, click here.

Kenya loses Sh1.4 billion ($15.5m) on collapsed buildings

2011-07-26T19:12:43-04:00

Chairman Gideon Mulyungi said 24 buildings have collapsed in the country since 1996. “Forty-one lives have been lost and 47 people injured over the same period,” Mr Mulyungi said in an interview.