Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

Posts
Thumbs

Ruhehe School / African Design Centre

In September 2016, MASS Design Group launched the African Design Centre in Kigali to train and empower the creative leaders who will design a more equitable, just and sustainable Africa. The program gives fellows the training and hands-on experience required to execute social impact driven solutions to the continent’s most pressing challenges.

Rwanda Cricket Stadium / Light Earth Designs

The RCSF is not only building a future for Cricket in Rwanda, but is facilitating reconciliation, and the rebuilding of communities through the essential values of cricket. Light Earth Designs- an integrated architectural and structural consultancy specialized in sustainable technologies and communities- takes us through the design of the first dedicated international cricket ground in Rwanda. ...

Soleluna Mixed Use Development / Light Earth Designs

Light Earth Designs is spearheading yet another low-carbon building technology in the region. At the heart of Kigali, is Soleluna- a project which is retaining, re-furbishing and redeveloping its existing premises with a high profile multi-storey mixed use development that showcases innovative low carbon building technologies.

Africa Centre For Peace / Mass Design Group

Mass Design Group have released plans for the African Centre for peace in Kigali, a monolithic architectural language that seeks to integrate the culture and ideologies of Rwanda as it continues to convene ideas and testimonies towards the 1994 genocide that wiped out a significant percentage of their population. The building in itself seeks to combine elements from the 'New Rwanda' towards est...

Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village / Mass Design Group

Malawi suffers from one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the world: in 2010, one in thirty-six Malawian women had a lifetime risk of dying during pregnancy or delivery. Over 85% of the country’s population lives in rural settings, with little access to professional medical care. As part of an effort to address this, the Presidential Initiative on Maternal Health and Safe...

Nyanza Education Centre / Dominikus Stark Architekten

The Central African State of Rwanda, commonly known as the "land of a thousand hills", is rarely the focus of West European interests. On a private initiative, on the road in Nyanza connecting the country's most important towns Kigali and Butare, a new IT Centre has been built. While the initial order was to design a new roof over a forecourt, after first discussions the idea was born to build ...

Rwanda PIH Share Houses / Sharon Davis Design

Rwinkwavu Rwanda is slowly coming to be known as the place of good architecture. More so with the influx of architecture firms like Mass Design, Sharon Davis Designs and other reserach based organizations experimenting with low cost sustainable architecture that is community based and pivotal to the societal issues of the area. The Share houses are no different, dotting the eccentric red brick ...

Lake Muhazi Gahini Church / Light Earth Designs

As I shake Peter Rich's hand and ask him whether he is now retired, he smirks and stares back almost semi insulted "I'm too young. I am just starting." And looking at his impeccable sustainable portfolio of architecture you can see why he is just starting. The Anglican Church just North of Kigali in Rwanda perhaps speaks to that metamorphosis form one technological advancement to the next while...

Women’s Opportunity Center / Sharon Davis Design

Located on a one-hectare site in the Kayonza district in eastern Rwanda, the Women’s Opportunity Center is energizing one small community’s subsistence-agriculture economy through female empowerment. Traveling to the center’s daytime classes and events on foot, residents—many of them survivors of war—learn income-generating skills, such as animal husbandry and processing techniques that can sus...

Foster + Partners Ventures into Rwanda with a Droneport Project to Save Lives

Lord Foster has launched proposals for the Droneport project in Africa to support cargo drone routes capable of delivering urgent and precious supplies to remote areas on a massive scale. The project is a collaboration between Redline partners led by Afrotech, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL); the Norman Foster Foundation; and Foster + Partners.

Rwinkwavu Neonatal Intensive Care Unit / Mass Design Group

The Rwinkwavu neonatal care unit by Mass design group seeks to answer the age old question. Can Architecture improve maternal and child health? The answer is simply not that straight forward and the project simply seeks to entrench within it an ideology of care beyond the pencil and the drawing board into the corridors of healthcare. It is a endeavour that Alan Ricks explains as "Simple constru...

Butaro Doctor’s Housing/ MASS Design Group

Mass Design Group’s zeal to offer architectural solutions that impact beyond the basic concepts of a building can sequentially be observed through their works. The group’s specific devotion towards the health sector is immense and invaluable.

Umubano Primary School/ MASS Design

In 2007, UK charity A Partner In Education (APIE), as part of its mission to boost education in Africa, committed to building a new school campus in the Kigali neighbourhood of Kabeza to replace dilapidated existing facilities. MASS was brought on board to select the new site, design the new educational facility, as well as assist in building the organizational structure to support the educatio...

Butaro Hospital/ MASS Design Group

In January 2011, the Rwandan Ministry of Health and Partners In Health (PIH) opened the 140-bed Butaro Hospital in the Burera District of Rwanda. Burera District, which has a population of over 340,000, has historically had very poor health indicators compared to other areas of Rwanda and is one of the most impoverished districts in the country. Prior to PIH’s arrival in 2007, Burera was one of...

Butaro Ambulatory Cancer Center/ MASS Design Group

With every structure, wall and building element within the ambulatory clinic by Mass Design, it seems to ask how can we design the best possible environment to receive cancer treatment?The Butaro Cancer Center of Excellence (BCCE) is the first comprehensive cancer center in East Africa. Developed for Partners In Health, who are pioneering the movement towards non-communicable disease care in su...