The project was born in collaboration with the NGO Africa’70, which has operated in Saharawi refugee camp of Rabuni since 2002 with several projects centered on cattle-breeding support, animal health and stray dogs control.

The school includes several didactic spaces (library, classrooms, clinic) as well as a few rooms to host local and foreign students, teachers and Africa’70 staff , for a total floor surface of approximately 500 sqm.

After the school was built, ASF-Italia explored the possibility to conduct further research on the use of adobe and other alternatives modes of construction, foreseeing the possibility to build a small prototype structure together with the local community, to be included in the veterinary school.

A series of works have been carried out in four hamlets in Karangasso-Vigué rural zone, in the South part of Burkina Faso (one of the world’s poorest countries) to create or complement 4 primary public schools. This project was realized together with a local association, Petit à Petit, and with school directors of this Burkina Faso zone, who have been developing in the last few years a reflection about the “ideal school”. This participative work contributed to enrich the architectonic proposal, improving teaching conditions and allowing the creation of new collective spaces for the village.

Each school is made of 3 classrooms, a library, teacher’s dwellings, school kitchen gardens, and outdoor spaces with outdoor blackboards and paillotes (lightweight construction made of timber and straw resting on metallic pillars that serves as a meeting place for the people of the township, as well as a space for a temporary dining room and shelter for the children).

All of them have been executed with low environmental impact techniques. Local resources were used in a broad process of community participation, accomplished with the support of a network of local craftsmen who contributed to train people from the villages. Around 200 persons, women and men, have participated in the work. A mixed construction was chosen for the classrooms, with metallic structures and laterite stone walls; stones were extracted from local quarries reducing transportation costs and encouraging local economy. For the teacher’s dwellings adobe bricks were employed with the earth vaults roof technique (Voûte Nubienne), using basic, readily available local materials and simple, easily appropriable procedures.

Because of its geographical position, Bobo Dioulasso is intrinsically a place of encounters and a carrefour of exchanges between different peoples and cultures.

Here three local associations of artists, Badenya, Sanyon, Farafina Yeleenba together with the Italian organization Koron Tlè, decided to respond to a need of the city by planning and finally realizing a center for education where they could assist and prepare local artists, which are a unique resource to the entire country.

ASF-Italia was invited from the start as a partner to share ideas on the definition of the architectural project, which was expected to be discussed and realized in the same interlocutory, cross-cultural way as the educational project itself.

The site hosting the intervention has a triangular shape andit is located in the periphery of Bobo Dioulasso. The architectural project makes use of a traditional Burkinese spatial structure: it revolves around a few courtyards and open spaces that are functionally independent from each other to guarantee the maximum flexibility in use. This arrangement also allowed the center to be built step-by-step during separate phases, according to the discontinuous fluxes of financial resources. The first phase concentrated on the working space for artistic activities: a large rehearsal room with an open courtyard, fitting rooms and an office. The second phase consisted in the construction of housing units, a building with a kitchen, dining rooms, an office and other small facilities.

12 housing units for teahers and students are organized around one open space and are connected to it through small wooden porches. In order to facilitate cross ventilation and climatic comfort, a small elevated loft was arranged in each unit.

All the building were realized with a concrete structure; walls are made in pierre taillée – earth blocks obtained by mining. This very traditional material was coupled with concrete to increase the overall structural quality of the construction.