Great Green Wall Single Stage Student Ideas Competition , Dakar / Senegal

 

Union Internationale des Architectes – International Union of Architects

 

The Great Green Wall in Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most inspiring and expeditious projects of the contemporary twenty-first century. It is an African-led initiative to create a huge 8000km long, 16km wide living greenbelt across the entire breadth of the Sahel-Savanah desert region from Dakar to Djibouti. The competition site in this Student Single Stage Ideas Competition is within the GGW belt between Senegal and Djibouti.

 

The Republic of Senegal, the starting point of the GGW shelter-belt traversing the Sahel- Savannah region is a Frenchspeaking country in West Africa bordered by Mauritania in the north, Mali to the east, Guinea to the southeast and Guinea-Bissau to the southwest. It is a flat country with a population in excess of 17,223,000 people that lies in the depression known as Senegal-Mauritania basin.

 

The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) ends at Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, a mostly French and Arabic speaking country of dry shrublands, volcanic formations and Gulf of Aden beaches. It is home to one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world, the low-lying Lake Assal in the Danakil Desert. The nomadic Afar people have settlements along Lake Abbe, a body of saltwater featuring chimneylike mineral formations. As at 2021,the population of Djibouti counted to 1,000,000 people.

 

This Single Stage Ideas Competition for Students was initiated by the UIA’s Region V to engage the global community of architecture students in the effort to harness the benefits of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to architecture in the service of the GGWI.

 

The task is a design proposal for a Sustainable Dwelling for up to 25 people. This is to be conceptually arranged in a combination of about 5 dwellings in the sense of a cluster of urbanisation, while one dwelling is presented in more detail. This enlargement will include the definition ofcommunity/public space as context for the dwelling proposal. Communal dwelling should enhance the ongoing development of the greenerypercentage around the selected site.

 

A participatory approach in design is recommended to review the courtyard system/cultural synthesis of the many tribes along the Sahel-Savanahshelterbelt. Further study of the Cultures along the region will help propose architectural solutions for the civilisation on the GGW belt.

 

The competition encourages participants to view the environment as a design resource for innovation, through the use of sustainable materials and novel design approaches for change investigations. Participants are expected to trigger many opportunities and explore solution-driven approaches to indigenous architectural challenges. Learning opportunities willinclude design that responds to realities of climate change, climate actions, peculiar contexts in urbanism, and the making of culture-sensitive productive rural landscapes while taking into account the need for affordable shelter, resilient dwelling, and sustainable livability in twenty -first-century rurality. 

 

Open to all students in architecture of the world

 

Competition Launch: 18 April 2022

Deadline for Registration: 20 August 2022

Submission of Entries: 20-30 September 2022

Announcement of Competition Results: 24 October 2022

 

1st prize: 5000 Euros and a certificate

2nd prize: 4000 Euros and a certificate

3rd prize: 3000 Euros and a certificate

4th prize: 2000 Euros and a certificate

5th prize: 1000 Euros and a certificate