FOCHTA Youth Centre

Luchenza, Malawi, East Africa

in progress........

We have often wondered how we might utilise the skills we've gained in ten years of practice - to benefit people who can not normally afford our services. Doctors can easily export their skills - lawyers have legal aid - but architects often find it difficult to contribute to people in need. Design is too often seen as a luxury. This was very much on our minds, when a friend, landscape architect Sacha Coles, asked if we were interested in designing a building for children orphaned by AIDS in Malawi, east Africa. We leapt at the opportunity. We had no idea at that time how all consuming, how challenging.......and yet how rewarding this project would become. Aside from signing up to design the building, on a pro-bono basis, we agreed, to help the small locally run NGO, FOCHTA, raise the $125,000 needed to build it.

Frustrated by the difficulties of email communication with the FOCHTA staff in Malawi (electricity supply is intermittent), Sam bought a ticket and travelled there with FOCHTA patron and co-founder Claude Ho in early 2007.

In taking on the project we had struggled with a number of questions; How could we, with our experience designing houses for well-off Sydneysiders, contribute anything of value to the design of a Youth centre for children orphaned by AIDS - in one of the poorest countries in the world's poorest continent? Wouldn't it be better to employ a local architect? Why impose western ideas on Africans?

Sam was surprised by the response - of the children themselves and of the local staff. Sam met young teenagers, who had watched their parents waste away and die from AIDS, and had then had to step into their shoes - to rear, feed, and nurture younger siblings. He visited children living in tiny mud brick huts, empty of possessions, surrounded by parched fields - almost constantly hungry. Yet they welcomed our input. They were keen to learn about how we do things. They wanted a Malawian building - but with an Australian sensibility.

FOCHTA, a locally run NGO, gives some 270 children a means to escape the poverty cycle; a future of being able to support themselves, and their families. Not by putting them in an institution, but by providing them with counselling, school fees and uniforms, a pair of shoes, a decent school lunch, and grain to take home to their hungry siblings. It allows them to stay in their village, retain their dignity - and get an education - a chance in life.

We developed set of design principles; Use locally available sustainably resourced materials. Assemble them with the best local technology. Ensure that the children feel a sense of ownership of the building, and make it robust enough for them help build it. The design we have come up with, together with landscape architect Sacha Coles, and engineer Jamie Shelton, is an interpretation of the Malawi vernacular. It is a series of rooms, a library, some offices, a communal kitchen, some teaching and recreation rooms - linked by covered outdoor spaces - unified under large pitched roofs - surrounding a small shaded courtyard. As one of the locals said, we hope that it might be more than youth education building - rather - a building that educates youth - about sustainability, about climate responsive materials, and about their place in the community. Thanks to assistance from volunteers from Architects Without Frontiers the design is now complete - and with the approval of the Thyolo community and FOCHTA Board, Ken Warr of Kahn Finch Group, is preparing detailed construction drawings.

Sam has now joined the FOCHTA board in Australia, and the office continues to asssit FOCHTA raise money for their work. For more information see www.fochta.org.au link below.

Tegan Waldren, from our office, and her partner Tom Williams Moore, both graduates of architecture, travelled to Malawi in early 2008 to assist FOCHTA with selection of builders, and making of sun dried clay blocks.

We are currently awaiting final approvals before construction commences. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.

Project Team:

Sam Crawford, Cressida Beale, Miles Heine, Tegan Waldren
with Architects Without Frontiers' volunteers; Tom Williams Moore, Amy Leenders, Eve Baker, Shraddha Raju, Mel Tasker, Jodie Dang

Design Development and Documentation: Ken Warr, Kahn Finch Group
Drawings: Miles Heine & Cressida Beale,
Models: Sarah Presland, Sam Crawford, Miles Heine and AWF volunteers

Consultants

Landscape Architect: Sacha Coles, Aspect Studios
Structural Engineer: Jamie Shelton, Northrop Consulting
Engineer (Malawi): Jon Norton
Photography: Anthony Fretwell, Sam Crawford, Drawings: Miles Heine & Cressida Beale,

Published

Cover Story Architecture Plus (Dubai) Issue 13 Inhouse Creative