Designed the “Place du marché” – a public space located across from the Bâtiment 7 Community Centre in Montreal. This project was supported by ASFQ via the Urban Solidarity program and was designed by volunteer architect Julio Cardenas. B7 is a heritage industrial building that, following 10 years of neighbourhood mobilization, became the emblematic gathering place for an engaged community striving to disenclave the Pointe Saint-Charles district, known as one of Montreal’s most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The space is self-managed by the Collectif 7 and now hosts several services and activities including a grocery store, brewery, artistic creation workshops, and vehicle- and bike-repair workshops. The ground in front of the building had to be decontaminated from industrial waste prior to being handed over to B7 to be permanently restored. The temporary project experimented with the future installation of removable, re-installable components produced from recycled materials provided through the organization’s circular-economy program. Several areas were set up to eat, watch shows, relax and let the kids play. The first activity organized in the building was the Summer Festival on June 21st.

The youth center was designed and built as a collaboration between Komitu architects team and two Cambodian NGOs Cambodian Volunteers for Society (CVS) and Khmer Kamputchea Krom for Human Rights and Development Association (KKKHRDA) in a disadvantaged urban neighbourhood of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. CVS provides Cambodian youth with opportunities to learn, get work experience and unlock their potentials in order to do their share in the development of Cambodian society. Volunteering youth make useful contributions to their communities while gaining work experience for their future professional careers. Through CVS, youth from different urban communities meet and find solutions for common problems. KKKHRDA manages the neighbourhood where the center will be built and airs a radio program about human rights.
The bases of Komitu’s work is on culturally sensitive and participatory design. During the design process the voice of the youth was heard through workshops. The building phase also engaged the locals. The design of the youth center is based on the use of local and sustainable building materials and technologies. Earth bricks are a low-emission choice for the bearing structures, while bamboo has been chosen for shadings and decoration because it is rapidly renewable, affordable and traditionally used in Cambodian culture. By developing modern architecture that derives from local esthetics and craftsmanship we can promote the use of these undervalued materials in modern day Cambodia.
The project started in march 2010 on Aalto University’s Cambodia Studio’s field trip, where Komitu members Elina Tenho and Tuuli Kassi organised the first workshops with the youth volunteering for CVS. In December 2010 we travelled back to Phnom Penh to introduce the first design for the youth center and to futher develop it together with the future users. In addition to the design workshop with the local youth, presentations were held at Limkokwing University for students of architecture and at Meta-house culture center for anyone interested.
During the year 2011 Komitu worked on the design and developed the bamboo and earth brick techniques together with engineering collaborators. In March 2012 the construction begun with filling the site and prefabricating bamboo parts. In August 2012 we had a change of constructor, after which the building advanced at a good pace and BQC construction

Following on from the success of ASF-UK’s Summer School, in 2005, a second summer school took place at the Eden Project in Cornwall in 2006.

This year the emphasis was on linking relief and early interventions with longer term developmental goals. It included a 2 day component of lectures and workshops led by world renowned speakers including Professor Nabeel Hamdi (Oxford Brookes University) and Mr. Anshu Sharma (SEEDS, India) who discussed rebuilding communities after disaster in relation to their own work.

Students were encouraged to discuss the issues of vulnerability and livelihoods, and vernacular responses to emergency shelter. The theories were put into practice with the building of temporary structures from waste materials in the Hot Tropics Biome of the Eden project in Cornwall. The structures stayed in the Biome for several months and continued to engage public understanding regarding living conditions of vulnerable people worldwide.

ASF-UK created a symbolic pavilion centrepiece for a major show garden at 2009 RHS Chelsea Flower Show to help raise the issue of homelessness and positive change. The project highlighted the work of Places of Change, an £80m capital improvement funding programme managed by the Homes and Communities Agency which seeks to identify, encourage, engage and realise the potential of homeless people enabling them to move on with, and turn around, their lives.

The Key garden was the product of a unique and ambitious collaboration between the Homes and Communities Agency, Communities and Local Government, the Eden Project, Homeless Link and Architecture Sans Frontières-UK. Poets, artists, gardeners and craft workers around the country who have been or remain homeless all helped in creating a place of hope, aspiration and community within a garden whose main theme is homelessness, as part of ‘The Key’ show garden design at Chelsea.

The design was founded on sustainability, resourcefulness, and the creative adaptation of materials that were once discarded by society as waste. These materials were transformed by people who have themselves experienced social exclusion through homelessness and who are now being trained at St Edmunds Society in Norwich and Noah Enterprise Centre in Luton. The pavilion brief was to create a place of hope, aspiration, community and activity. At the same time it has been a tool which has encouraged and enabled as many people as possible to contribute to its creation.

The “Place of Change” pavilion was defined by reclaimed timber posts. Artworks are stencilled on the timbers expressing a personal life journey of offending, homelessness and redemption. The centre-piece of the pavilion was a large multipurpose meeting table which doubles as a planting bench, made from salvaged old doors and windows. Car windscreens were used to cover sitting shelters and the posts and timber were all reclaimed materials. The garden received formal recognition in the form of an RHS Silver Flora medal and third place in the People’s Choice Awards. The pavilion has been a springboard for those who participated in the process to achieving increased confidence and inspiration, new skills and networks, and employment opportunities.

The main goal of the project is to help the newly created municipal communes in construction, maintenance and modernization of public toilets in an ecologically sustainable way, accessible to all users and economically viable.  An important aspect of the project is also improving the overall health of residents of the municipalities and support local authorities in achieving various functions in field of public sanitation.
Vernacular architecture is the result of hundreds of years of architecture evolution and optimization, using local available materials and construction technologies known in particular area.
Traditional architecture often uses passive energy solutions to create good, comfortable living conditions depending on climate.

Our goal is to protect the local architectural heritage, and to support and disseminate passive solutions that use natural energy sources, such as wind or sun, to reduce construction costs and ensure the comfort of use of new buildings.

„Several new housing units for the staff at Masanga Hospital in Sierra Leone. The hospital will thus have an easier time recruiting qualified staff. Today the hospital is functioning well and around 150 patients are treated every day. One of the biggest issues, that they are facing, is the lack of decent staff housing. Without decent housing the staff is left to live in primitive huts and attracting qualified staff is difficult.
DEVELOPMENT TARGETS:
- That Masanga Hospital can attract qualified labour by offering decent accommodation.
- That the hospital, through more and better trained staff, can increase its capacity and provide better service to people living within its catchment area.
ARCHITECTURE:
The project contains several new housing units for the staff of the Masanga Hospital. The specific units is a part of a bigger whole, which gradually can develop and be used by locals as a standard model for developing their village. The units have a longer lifespan and offers a better indoor climate for a lower cost. The country is going to operate the hospital by 2016 and the ambition is to construct 250 staff housing units by then. An important aspect is to secure local ownership by including the community in the construction, so they can take over the future constructions.
It has been of high focus to develop housing that took climate, functionality and local materials into consideration. The intention has also been to integrate parameters such as natural ventilation, daylight and cooling. Because of a very limited financial frame low cost solutions have also been of high priority. Each unit is to be inhabited by a family or three nurses.
PROJECT TEAM: Rasmus C. Hamann, Camilla Kragh, Silje Erøy Sollien