Africa made in the shade
  • Home
  • what
  • why
  • how
  • who
  • our economic model
  • training
  • our needs
  • contacts, get in touch with us
  • pictures
  • JANE ROSE SPEISER
  • updates & latest news
  • SENEGAL
  • WISTERIA HOUSE
  • JANE ROSE SPEISER
  • Home
  • what
  • why
  • how
  • who
  • our economic model
  • training
  • our needs
  • contacts, get in touch with us
  • pictures
  • JANE ROSE SPEISER
  • updates & latest news
  • SENEGAL
  • WISTERIA HOUSE
  • JANE ROSE SPEISER
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

why 
         are we doing this:
'you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. . . .'
BOB DYLAN, Mediterranean Homesick Blues    


​

Picture

According to the World Economic Forum “The world is moving to the city. No part of the planet is urbanizing faster than sub-Saharan Africa. The continent’s population of roughly 1.1 billion is expected to double by 2050. More than 80% of that growth will occur in cities, especially slums. www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/africa-biggest-cities-fragility/ ​

 housing  is the most pressing need for all African cities

Picture
To provide for their needs the majority of the houses presently built across the continent make use of hollow cast concrete blocks and galvanized sheeting for their roofs. The shapes of these buildings tend to resemble a child’s text-book drawing  invented a few centuries ago in Northern Europe and North America. Nothing could be farther from the actual needs of the inhabitants of the dwelling. Such a rectangular, boxlike,  poorly insulated, structure would be more useful for frying chicken than for cooling people. Furthermore these materials require vast expenditures in manufacturing and transport from other countries who reap the profits selling them to people who cannot afford them.  But this solution has been in vogue throughout the continent, as it mimics the ‘ye olde Englishe abode’ of colonial times, and from far away it visually signifies ‘gracious affluence.’ 


Picture
I have spent the past twenty years rethinking both the spatial organization, and the combination of building materials that would be an order of magnitude more appropriate,  both economically and ecologically speaking, while maintaining an elegant modern look. I have experimented with a number of hybrid design and construction techniques which I believe could triple the thermal inertia  and halve the cost of materials for a house in a country such as Senegal, Gambia or Nigeria.  I have experimented with these techniques in the many houses I have rebuilt, from San Francisco, to the South of France to Bangladesh, to Italy, with excellent results.  Many of the changes I propose are not in and of themselves ‘rocket science’. It is their combined effect in a comprehensive system that makes the actual difference.  This is what I propose to make use of in the prototypes which I am planning to build near Dakar,  where the temperature hovers around ninety degrees and the daily wage is an average of  six dollars.