Tuesday, the last day of our 4 day trip to Elmina was quite an experience, the best was definitely saved for last. We picked a fast car from cape coast to Saltpond where we were to meet Steve from Sustain Adinkra, who took us to visit a project he is working on at the moment. 

No one really knew what to expect from such a small town but our impressions on our arrival were pretty much the same and I’m sure everyone else was just as surprised as I was. The building though unfinished was AMAZING! Standing at two storeys high, the curved housing facility clad with raffia is definitely a sight to behold. The highlight of the trip was being a part of the building process, we all took parts in cutting and skinning the raffia members and hammering them in place to form a room partition. We also had the chance to build the walls for the outdoor rooms which were made of old car tyres. We cut, sewed together and filled the tyres with sand to form the walls. The walls of the bathrooms and toilets which were a few metres from the main building were made from concrete and glass bottles which reflected the light that shone on it, giving it a lovely effect. Steve then put us in groups and told us to create anything in forty minutes using the materials available. My team made up of Steinunn, Emily and myself tried to make a chair using raffia which didn’t exactly turn out the way we wanted it to! The other team made up of Andrews, Lisanne and Kofi made an unfinished room divider using a car tyre, raffia and empty bottles.

The practical day gave us lots of ideas to incorporate into the FTZ proposal, the rest of the week we will be collating all the information we have collected on the trip to incorporate into our designs. 

Adjoa

Sunday saw us at the Oguaa Football for Hope Centre. The building, commissioned by FIFA and run by an NGO (Play Soccer Ghana) consists of a structure with facilities dedicated to education and public health as well as a small-size artificial turf football pitch.

One of the staff members at hand, Gertrude, gave us a tour of the building and acquainted us with some of the challenges and successes of the programme. The centre runs on a 48-week curriculum and children aged 4-15 are invited to attend. The programme runs after school and every week a different skill is taught using football to engage, inspire and educate the children. Gertrude, our guide, was one of the first beneficiaries of the programme.

To achieve its aim of public education, the building has facilities like classrooms, a library, internet cafe, laboratory, basic health care area and an office for staff members.

The design uses sustainable construction techniques in innovative ways. The principal materials used in the design are bamboo and shipping containers. The containers serve as the main building envelope with the bamboo used as cladding. It has a roof of Perspex and aluminium sheets which allows light into the spaces below, the design also captures the breeze making the need for fans minimal. The team thought there were many ideas that we could use from this case study in the FTZ design.

Kofi

Last weekend we took a four-day field trip to the Cape Coast area to continue our research into Global Mamas’ production processes, and start investigating local building materials. We had a busy itinerary, and after arriving at the beautiful Stumble Inn we got stuck straight in with a trip to a kindergarten school in Ayensu built by Arup Engineers as part of their international development programme, in partnership with the Sabre Trust. The school is made up of three separate classroom buildings, each housing a different year group, situated around a central open-air structure which is used as an outdoor teaching area. Bamboo, a locally available and sustainable material, is used as cladding, and for the structure and roof of the outdoor classroom. We also learnt about how the earth bricks were made, which are used to construct the walls. Paddy, one of the teachers even showed us inside and explained the educational programme that has been developed and implemented by Sabre to improve on the current standard of kindergarten education in Ghana. It was an inspiring project and useful for us to see how local building materials have been incorporated into the design.

We continued on to a bamboo processing centre, where Sabre have been experimenting with ways to treat the bamboo so that it doesn’t get eaten by parasites. Here fresh bamboo is stripped to remove the outer layer, and then submerged in the treatment bath – a combination of borax and boric acid – and left for a few days, before being dried. The treated bamboo can then be used for building and is much longer lasting than untreated bamboo.

Emily

The Global Mamas' programme in Accra started on the 22nd June with a day workshop at the Hub Accra led by ASF-UK. This day brought together Global Mamas' staff, local built environment and development professionals with local and international architecture students to re-think spaces of textile production in ethical and sustainable ways.

The day started with Carrie Hawthorne from Global Mamas projecting a global picture of the current textile market and why fair trade was so important. The next session focussed on sustainable thinking and gave a platform for built environment professionals working in Ghana to showcase their work.

Samuel Siaw from Housing the Masses talked about scarcity of resources, Mae-Ling Lokko described how innovative processes could take local materials and develop new sustainable products, she also described the cultural heritage being lost in the globalisation of Accra. Steve Cole of Sustain Adinkra talked about the people centred approach, using local materials with local knowledge and nurturing experimentation is key to his work.

DK Osseo-Assare of Low-Do Office presented his thesis project in Tema exploring informal economies in relation to Free Trade Zones, he also showed a number of innovative bamboo structures recently completed and in the process of being constructed at various locations in West Africa.      

Renae Adam, co-founder of Global Mamas, spoke about the history of the organisation and then explained the architectural brief in more detail. This was followed by a breakout session where teams brainstormed initial ideas and visions for the future production space. Ideas ranged from small scale design interventions such as partitions made from left over material to debating the challenges of creating a space that was ethical but competitive in a global market.

The last session focussed on ASF-UK methodology and the participatory design process that will be utilised to create inclusive spaces. The programme of the summer school was then explained and final comments noted. One of the significant points here was expressed by Stuart Gold founder of Trashy Bags who commented that we are not just selling a product we are selling a story and this new space is part of that story.