architecture – Page 98

Opportunity for interesting design

August 14, 2013May 4, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

In late June, we attended the launch of the Women’s Opportunity Center in Kayonza, Rwanda.

Constructed with the support of Women for Women International (WfWI) and other donors, the center will train the region’s women in financial literacy, business, agribusiness, and life skills. WfWI has given support to over 56,000 women in Rwanda since 1997.

The facility was designed by the American firm Sharon Davis Design. Particular attention was given to using local building materials and installing eco-friendly technology.

The buildings and walls around the center were constructed with 450,000 beautiful handmade bricks — each one stamped with the logo of WfWI. They were pressed by a co-op of WfWI training graduates from clay dug in an adjacent valley.

The plan above is from the Sharon Davis Design brochure. You may want to click on the photo to see a larger version.

The brochure explains some of the design concept:

To keep the scale and quality of the center’s spaces intimate and diverse, the organization of traditional Rwandan residences and villages became the inspiration for organizing and dispersing the many program elements across the 1-hectare* plot. A series of human-scaled pavilions are clustered around the center of the site. . . . The circular nature of many of the interior spaces is also in response to WfWI’s approach of teaching in the round.

During the ceremony, Sharon Davis explained that her team wanted to create a particularly reassuring design for women who might be shy about entering this type of public place. WOC expects 200-300 women to participate in various activities every day.

The center includes domitory lodging — in the tent above — for students and visitors. All toilets on site are composting toilets, which will produce fertilizer for use in the center’s farm and for sale in its market.

Rainchains direct all the runoff from the buildings to two buried 40,000 liter cisterns. This collection is expected to meet all the water needs of the site.

The bonding pattern and curves of the buildings’ brick walls eliminate the need for concrete columns and beams.

The workshop buildings have no doors or ceilings, and the open pattern lets in diffuse natural light and air.

Inside the workshop rooms, students sit on two levels of benches. (I don’t think the chair is meant to stay.) The floor tiles were made by WfWI graduates in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The recently planted landscaping consists of simple rounded shapes of turf grass and ground cover plants.

I don’t know how they will handle the large center area labeled as ‘Gathering Space’ on the plan above (there was a large tent there on the launch day). They may leave it flat for event tents or build a circle of benches similar to the workshop interiors.

Below are photos of the area labeled ‘Farm’ on the plan. It was being partly used for parking that day, but I hope it will eventually be filled by raised-bed vegetable gardens like these.

Just below, you can see the rainwater cisterns and the partly underground ‘Farm House,’ which I was told will be used for storage.

The center hopes to be financially independent from the WfWI in five years. It will rent training and event space to partner organizations and market, retail, and storage spaces to local small businesses. It will also offer lodging and restaurant services for visitors and travelers.

You can see more photos of WOC by Sharon Davis Design here.

*2.471 acres

Ruzizi Tented Lodge at Akagera National Park

July 7, 2013August 17, 2017 Cindy at enclos*ure5 Comments

After our recent drive to the southeast corner of Rwanda, we backtracked and then headed north to Akagera National Park to spend the night.

It was about 4:30 p.m. when we arrived at the park’s welcome center, and I was anxious to get some photos before the light disappeared. Here, near the equator, dark comes between 6:00 and 6:30 all year round. No extra long summer days for us.

I liked the pebble border to the welcome center’s concrete floor, which had been colored red, like the surrounding dirt.

The attractive building, which for some reason I failed to photograph, was stone and stucco and had a thatched roof, like the lodge pictured below.

In a tree just outside the welcome center, there was a weaver bird nest (above) — this one with a very long entrance tunnel, a protection against predators.

The Ruzizi Tented Lodge — which opened inside the park just this year — is on a small strip of largely undisturbed land along the edge of Lake Ihema.

Boardwalks keep visitors off the native plants, not to mention away from the equally native crocodiles and hippos. (An electric fence keeps other large animals out on the inland side of the lodge.)

The camp has seven tented cabins, each with a full bath, one or two real beds (with reading lamps), and an outlet for recharging phones.

Below is our tent’s “front yard,” which was quite close to the water’s edge. That night, we heard, but did not see, hippos near our tent.

Each tent has a solar panel for lights and hot water — shown above.

Even in the dry season, there were some wildflowers catching the last of the day’s light.

In the evening, we had cocktails around a fire on the riverside deck, below.

Breakfast was also served there — while monkeys ate fruit off a big tree above us.

In the shrubby trees just beyond the deck, there were dozens of (empty) weaver birds’ nests.

Located along Rwanda’s eastern border with Tanzania, Akagera National Park presents quite a different landscape from the mountainous forests and farms of western and central Rwanda. (It is one of four large national parks in the country.)

“[I]ts undulating plains support a cover of dense, broad-leafed woodland interspersed with lighter acacia woodland and patches of rolling grassland studded evocatively with stands of the superficially cactus-like Euphorbia candelabra [aka E. ingens] shrub,” according to the Bradt guide to Rwanda.

There are also large wetlands surrounding several lakes and the channels of the Akagera River, which runs along the border between the two countries.

The game-viewing is not up the standards of the great savanna parks in neighboring countries, but every visitor I have talked to recently has seen elephants, hippos, zebra, and giraffes, as well as antelopes and impalas. (Unfortunately, we did not have time to tour the park during our stay.)

Currently, there may or may not be lions and leopards in small numbers, but there are reportedly plans to restock them — and add black rhinos — eventually.

According to the Bradt guide, the birdlife is “phenomenal.” The landscape is particularly scenic, with forests, lakes, swamps, and low mountains. Perhaps best of all, the park is fairly empty of other tourists.

Camping (in real tents) is allowed in various locations. It is also possible to take boat safaris on Lake Ihema.

Vintage landscape: small side porch

June 28, 2013November 13, 2013 Cindy at enclos*ure3 Comments

Hill Plantation, Wilkes County, Georgia, 1939 or 1944, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

I love the latticework on this old side porch.

K Street in 1850

June 26, 2013March 11, 2018 Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments

View from the second story of the home of Mrs. John Rodgers at Franklin Row, K Street, N.W., between 12th and 13th Streets, in Washington, D.C.

The watercolor* depicts the backyard and adjacent neighborhood and shows children standing on balconies.

It was painted by Montgomery C. Meigs. Mrs. Rodgers was Meigs’s mother-in-law and the widow of Commodore John Rogers, a naval hero.

Despite the modest appearance of the yard and surroundings, Mrs. Rodgers was wealthy and socially well-connected. Even well-to-do Washington in the 1850s seems to have had a somewhat ramshackle look.

You will need to click on the image to get a larger view. Here’s what the downtown city block looks like now.

As a military engineer, Meigs left his mark on the capital. In the 1850s, he supervised the building of the Washington Aqueduct and the Union Arch Bridge, as well as the wings and dome of the Capitol Building. He also played an important role in the early design of Arlington National Cemetery, and he designed and supervised the construction of the Pension Building (now the National Building Museum).

*Via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

A study in steps: Sacromonte

June 14, 2013April 13, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

His wandering step
Obedient to high Thoughts, has visited
The awful ruins of old. . .

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Alastor“

Stairway and shrines of Sacromonte, near Amecameca, Mexico, ca. 1880-1897, by William Henry Jackson, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

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