Women's House
In a rapidly developing country like Senegal, women from rural communities play a unique and crucial role. Handling a wide range of activities, they represent togetherness, resilience, enterprise, and innovation. This undying spirit of women is at the core of the ideation of the project. Senegal has witnessed important victories for women empowerment in the last decade, yet, lasting impact can be created only when deeply embedded beliefs of unequal gender roles are challenged and transformed. Therefore, we perceive the Women’s house as a platform that provides agency to the vulnerable.
Hence the idea of sustainability in the project is in three-fold – environmental, economic and social.
Economic :
The Women’s house provides adequate and tailored space for women to create and promote various products that are useful to them. It becomes a point of initiation for them, to leverage their work and reach out to bigger markets. Various courses, training programs and workshops can be conducted here; the computer rooms allow women to explore wider prospects, thus increasing opportunities to generate sustained income. The site area is developed into small parcels of farms, for prototyping, innovating and training women in various agricultural practices, so that they can apply it for the benefit of their fields.
Social :
Perhaps, the most crucial role of the Women’s house in the long run is how all the activities and efforts have the potential to improve women’s social standing. Providing various, flexible, customizable and safe spaces for women to voice their thoughts is the first step to moving the needle towards their empowerment. The transparent, open and inclusive nature of the building allows for this to happen without having to distance themselves from their families and children. In the environs of the Women’s house, children are equally safe and important.
The project holds potential to create impact on a larger scale as well. Therefore, the site chosen is located close to the highway making it accessible, visible and well-connected to most villages in the neighborhood.
This multi-functionality and circularity in the usage of spaces is also extrapolated to how the design integrates sustainability.
Environment :
The construction technique is mostly simple and traditional using natural materials, available readily in close proximities. Local timber, bamboo and earth products are actively chosen instead of materials like steel and concrete as the local people are more familiar with processes of maintenance, construction and the overall ambience. Bamboo fences are repurposed to form screens that allow air flow through the perforated wall and into the courtyard, thus keeping the building naturally cooler.
The foundation is constructed with laterite bricks and cement mortar, filled with crushed laterite stone and earth excavated from site. The plinth and the court are marked by brick laid in pattern. Compound columns made of four bamboos (Bamboo Vulgaris) bound together using rope. Exterior columns are 5m tall and interior columns are 3.5m tall to create an inward slope that forms the roof. The walls are made of red laterite bricks and fixed with cement mortar. Each wall is a single brick wall. Local trunk wooden beams (2m x 0.2m x 0.4m) are used as lintels and Samba wooden beams (2m x 0.05m x 0.08m) are used as battens to support a breathable roof repurposed from bamboo fences.
Bamboo fences are repurposed as breathable screens (1m x 2.4m), fixed to a framework of rosewood beams. Partitions of plywood covered with local fabric on the outside side and chalk board/ pin-up board on the inside are fixed to rosewood framework. The flooring of the interior spaces is mosaic with patterns of broken tiles in cement slurry. For the exterior space, laterite brick is fixed with cement mortar in different patterns. The outer thatch roof is made of straw piled neatly in layers supported by wild bamboo framework. The thatched roof collects rainwater in the court and directs it to a water reservoir for future use.
