STUDIOBENAIM - Busajo Campus in Soddo, assuring to the children a sense of belonging to the place
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Busajo Campus in Soddo, assuring to the children a sense of belonging to the place

STUDIOBENAIM

Education  /  Completed
STUDIOBENAIM
Busajo Campus is a facility dedicated to local street children, who are hosted for a specific period of time, during which they are helped to rebuild their lives and find respect for themselves and others.
The Campus provides spaces for living, teaching, professional training, sports and leisure activities. These spaces are structured in the form of a village on an area of 33.500 square meters.
The main cultural challenge for the project was creating a space able to be accepted as familiar from the local children. The Campus architectural language uses the same vocabulary’s elements of the local spontaneous way of building, but reassembled in order to block the chaos and dispersion typical of the Ethiopian suburbs. The attention to local visual habits, materials and colors has been from the beginning the main tool to assure to the children a sense of belonging to the place.
The challenge coming from the site climate was the necessity to provide protection from heat and rains.
Therefore, all the facades of the buildings were provided with a continuous “filter-device”, a sort of covered porch shielded from the outside by eucalyptus wood panels, structured to form sunscreen grids. The overhang depth of the rooves and balconies helps create constant shading to the facades, generating, together with the sunscreen panels, a real passive cooling system for the buildings. The same “filter-space” acts as a porch, protecting from bad weather and allowing children to continue their outdoor activities, even in the rainy season.
For the main buildings the Mediterranean courtyard type was chosen, in order to enhance community gatherings in a protected space – not only from the elements but from the street.
The internal courtyards are important spaces for community gatherings, where children can meet, learn and play in a safe and secure environment.
Moreover, the presence of constantly shaded courtyards, helps create internal areas with air masses at a temperature and pressure different from those of the facades exposed to the sun, triggering ventilation movements that contribute to natural cooling.
The project makes extensive use of local materials: eucalyptus wood, a national Ethiopian tree, used from the construction phase for the scaffolding, and a local stone used for the courtyards flooring. The eucalyptus was then used for all the truss structures supporting the rooves, for all the solar screens protecting the facades, for the railings of the galleries.
The natural red earth present in the area was used for the coloring of the concrete floors.
The campus is based on a principle of maximum self-sufficiency, containing spaces dedicated to vegetable gardens and animal husbandry. Children are involved in the management of these activities for educational purposes.
The Campus has been equipped with an autonomous well, which supplies drinking water also for people out from the campus.
The rainwater coming from the rooves has been regulated so to be able to irrigate.

Credits

 Soddo
 Ethiopia
 Busajo Onlus
 09/2020
 4300 mq
 André Benaim
 André Benaim, Fabio Azzato, Stefano Combet, Danilo Gentili
 Tadesse Fikadu
 AeI progetti, Firenze (Structures)
 Pietro Savorelli

Curriculum

Born in Edinburgh in 1956, André Benaim lives and works in Florence where he graduated in Architecture with a thesis on the restoration of Florence’s Niccolini Theatre. Studio Benaim is specialized in the restoration and renewal of public and private buildings, projects in the commercial, retail and hospitality sectors, in Italy and abroad. His projects always show respect for the history and character of the building and its context; through the sober language of contemporaneity, he recreates an atmosphere that is unique yet modern. His portfolio of private home projects has seen André Benaim work on extensions, new constructions and restorations from London to Istanbul, via Florence and Chianti. The projects include important examples of the transformation of high-level historic residences, set in a heritage landscape, into contemporary buildings; his strong focus is always on environmental sustainability and relationship with the context.

http://www.studiobenaim.it/it/...


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