Isthme // Le Chaos Sensible/
Dafni Filippa
Meriam Sehimi
Project Details
Location(City/Country):
Accra / Ghana
Typology:
Residential
Year (Design/Construction):
2020 / -
Area (Net/Gross):
- / 9.000 m2
Operational Carbon emissions (B6) kgCO2e/m2/y:
-
Embodied Carbon emissions (A1-A3) kgCO2e/m2:
-- Experimental material tectonic by replacing about 40% of the coarse aggregates in a conventional concrete mixture with wetted bamboo chips to reduce the overall weight while achieving the same strength and stability.
- Cross-wall building structure rotated to capture the natural ocean breeze.
- Funnel-like design of the cross walls in the living units to offer natural ventilation of the kitchen and toilet units.
- Rainwater is captured every two living units through a “butterfly” roof shape to be used vertically in the building for multiple uses.
- Locally handcrafted textiles which can be spanned and used as canopies to offer shading throughout the site.
- Detached roof structure (gap between the core and secondary roof structure) and use of handcrafted textiles to achieve natural cross ventilation and heat reduction inside the living units.
- Movable fabric panel system for cooling and privacy between the units. The system has two variations and is manually activated by the user to provide thermal comfort. The first one works through water condensation and the second one conductivity both using a stretched fabric.
Project description as provided by the author.
“Accra, the capital of Ghana is a booming city in West Africa. The task is to design a mixed-use building in Jamestown, a vibrant quarter which is one of the oldest and historically most important parts of the Ghanaian capital. Jamestown is a diverse place with its popular boxing clubs, fishing harbor and markets. The site is located by the seaside and High Street, one of Accras‘ main roads, thus offering a diverse potential for living, commercial, sport and leisure. The aim is to design a multistorey building, which fulfils different functions: it provides apartments suitable for Ghanaian families; gives space for commercial, such as shops and restaurants; complements the former uses with a community program e.g. Sports facilities.”
The design scheme of Isthme or Le Chaos Sensible, was influenced by the site’s context and also from the psychology of the topographic and urban fabric. Sensing Africa’s fluctuating nature, our priority was to capture and grow an “Architecture of Empowerment” while revealing and celebrating the generosity of the “African Spirit”.
As the site is located in the Ghanaian coastline, it performs actively through its natural borders which constantly absorb the complex and vibrant overflow of the city. This exact relationship between topography and human behaviour defines the project’s identity.
On site, the naturally formed isthmus combined with the city’s dense urban fabric forms a “Sensible Chaos”, an ordered but also kinetic space. While observing and analysing the photos and videos of Accra, we were fascinated by how the movement of lightweight elements (e.g temporarily spanned fabrics, informal roofs, hanged clothing pieces) could be instantly transformed into architecture the second they were set in tension by the ocean breeze. Reflecting similar moments in our building, we envisioned a lightweight locally-handcrafted textile canopy, which performs under the wind’s choreography hiding or revealing moments of the building’s program.
The chosen program of Isthme or Le Chaos Sensible is based on the notions of habitat, human dignity and identity and orders a dynamic progression of space towards the ocean. In order to weave these 3 narratives together, we positioned “activation points” which work as notations initiating our program‘s growth and dynamic, either pulling or releasing tension between the spaces.
Following the importance of freedom and expression, we aimed to create an open structure which “blows out the space”. Rather than just working with forms, we imagined them as being forces, and leading energies in our concept were a movement of a space causes the activation of another.
