Senegal School

MADO Architects (Maziar Dolatabadi) Location: Kafountine, Senegal Date: 2022 Area: 1,984 sqm Status: Competition Proposal Client: Kakolum NGO Lead Architect: Deniz Ebrahimi Azar Design team: Reza Valinejad, Mahsa Rajabpour, Hadiis Karimi, Sona Taghipour Interior Design & Rendering: Donya Yousefi Model: Aria Rahiminejad, Fatemeh Miri In Senegal, villages were formed around the tree, because of the myths about the baobab tree in their culture, and this was the idea of forming spaces around the site trees, which was a good response to one of the issues of the competition, which was to preserve the trees. The formation of spaces around trees also symbolically referred to the theme of unity, which was one of the design concepts. Initially, a two-meter offset was formed around the trees, to conserve the roots of the trees. As the space required to preserve the trees became clear, an attempt was made to explain the exact geometry of the form. Two circles with a radius of 8 meters, surrounded the central trees of the site, and to provide the area of the yard and playground, a third circle was added to the circles, for this purpose. According to the determined geometry, circular spaces were formed around the courtyards, which eventually connected to each other, and formed a unified form. After the initial stain was created, to create the general form of the school, according to the typology of the building and the weather conditions, a triangular shape was used to form the roof and walls of the school, where the roof and the wall were connected. To access the inner courtyard from the outside of the site, the integrated form was cut from three areas to establish this connection. In the three separate spaces created, according to the demand of the competition, which was based on phasing in five stages, the required spaces and general spots were formed.