This project is for the Tatale community, a sustainable teaching, learning, training and production centre at the northeast of Ghana on the Togo border. It is run by the Salesians with their Don Bosco mission.

There will be a school to learn sustainable construction techniques such as adobe masonry, rammed earth, timber structures etc., a school for agriculture and the production of local agricultural products, an electrical training centre, domestic economy and healthy nutrition as well as student dorms, a community hall, library and teacher accommodations. Through this vocational training the young people are to be enabled to secure the living for the families and to counteract the problem of rural exodus and emigration.

For decades, construction in the context of international aid has predominantly followed a specific pattern: foreign organizations erect their structures, based on a simple grid pattern and made of industrialized, often imported materials, in the midst of vernacular buildings. Development projects do not typically incorporate endogenous potentials or valuable local building traditions. Yet since these initiatives originate from wealthy and powerful parts of the world, the imported materials become status symbols: strength and stability, power, education, prosperity.

This project aims to develop an alternative. Building with natural materials, such as earth, maximizes the potentials of freely available resources and creates employment opportunities. As a result, investments in the built environment generate returns in both environmental and social capital.

This is what we call architecture for development.

Text: Courtesy of Studio Anna Heringer
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