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.
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African Wildlife Foundation Ilima School Mass Design Group
Architects:
MASS Design Group
Location: Ilima,
Congo
Interior Décor: Mass Design Group
Project Year: 2015
Photographer: Rachel Brose
Website: www.massdesigngroup.org
"The ilima primary school is so far away. it takes three flights and a six hour motorcycle ride to get there, which takes about three days. this also means that not one building material can come in that can’t fit on the back of a bike. consequently, we had to build it all out of materials we could source or farm from this very site."
Alan Murphy, Mass Design Co Founder
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- 09 September 2015
- Edwin Seda
- Sustainability , Education Centres , Editor's Choice , Selected Works ,
You give, they give, we all give. That is the mindset that Mass Design group entered the Ilima School project with, that a little care from the tiniest sources can ripple across the wider angle of the whole spectrum of humanity and cause a paradigm shift.
And it is with the collaboration of AWF that the Congolese project that will cater to the future of the Ilima children was born.
The school speaks to a silent giant within the African architecture and building landscape, the power of the people. The ability to empower local craftsmen, carpenters and masons, teachers, students and the community at large to collectively create something wonderful.
It is much more than just brick, timber and space, it is a spirit that entangles itself within this school, and echoes far beyond with the Mass Creed "great design and architecture is possible everywhere".
From the Project Architects:
In collaboration with the African Wildlife Foundation, MASS completed its first conservation school in the rural Congolese jungle village of Ilima. The school serves as a primary school as well as a community center for the safe and mutually beneficial integration with local wildlife.
The school’s construction is grounded in the belief that conservation and community development is most feasible when communities are given the opportunity to develop in harmony with surrounding natural environments.
School construction used exclusively local materials, including the fabrication of custom shingles using local timber on-site.
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 drawin...
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 o...
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SELECTED WORKS
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The idea of planned mixed-class neighborhoods was first proposed by Ebenezer Howard in his 1898 book, To-morrow: A peaceful Path to Real ...
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- Yves Saint Laurent Museum / Studio KO
- 09 Apr 2018
While studying the couturier’s archives, Studio KO became intrigued by the duality between curved and straight lines, and between loose a...
CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIRECTORY
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The Zliten campus is a new branch of Al Asmariya University, located in the oasis town and fishing port of the same name, 120 kilometers ...
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- Circa Gallery on Jellicoe / studioMAS
- 04 Apr 2015
The new free standing gallery annex is a functional extension of the existing gallery, located in Rosebank. The building consists of a si...
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- Mahali Mzuri Safari Camp / Real Studios
- 30 Sep 2015
It is a sight of beauty, a merging of man and nature, a design endeavour that only fans of both architecture and nature "archinatures" ca...
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