ARCHITECTURE
Baghere Village | Senegal
Women’s House ‘The Baobab’
A courtyard-centred proposal using the baobab as a spatial and cultural reference for gathering, discussion and protection.
Client | Kaira Looro
Budget | €15,000
Status | Competition entry
RIBA Stages 0-2
Area | 200 sqm
Use | Education and culture
Team | Piotr Smiechowicz, Luke Murray and Yianna Moustaka
Scope | Concept and experience design
CONTEXT
The baobab is also a symbol of the Senegalese people and reflects the national motto, 'One People, One Goal, One Faith', represented in Senegalese heraldry. The Women's House is organised around a central courtyard that acts as its primary activity zone, a place for debate and discussion arranged like a traditional theatre in the round. This recalls the historic role of baobab trees as gathering places for political rallies and community discussion, where their large canopies provided shade. The Women's House does not seek to invent a new form of gathering, but to provide a setting focused on questions of gender and equality.
ARCHITECTURAL RESPONSE
The architecture of the Women's House expresses equality and strength through the rhythm and weight of its structural columns. Twelve habitable columns occupy the perimeter, creating a spatial and structural enclosure around the primary internal space and protecting it from the surrounding environment. The apparent weight of the walls suggests strength, while clerestory openings admit ventilation and indirect light and provide protection from direct sunlight and windblown sand. The columns were developed through research into ancient baobab trees found across Senegal and wider Africa.
