Workshop

We have done our research, now knowing more about Ghana and Gyetiase, more about the traditional building methods in Ghana and having carefully looked at the brief.

However, we still have a lot of questions and put these forward to Ashanti.

Their answers confirm our assumptions about the structure of the building (concrete columns, concrete slabs and a timber roof), seismic activity (none), available timber and the capacity of the septic tank.

We also established the differences between the existing drawings and the real building and we refined the brief: the extension will house a varying number of UK volunteers, requiring a living area, office, bedrooms, showers, toilets and a kitchen. We would like to encourage the use of sustainable energy sources and water recycling.

With all this knowledge it was time to start designing! On a grey afternoon, we gathered around at home, with lots of hot tea, cookies, tracing paper and pencils.

One of the first things we agreed on was the ambition to make this extension very sustainable, simple but of outstanding quality and of course beautiful, all within the limitations set by the existing building.

We thought about thermal mass, natural ventilation, shading, rainwater collection, local materials, privacy vs. openness.

The shape of the building will have to follow the existing structure: the loadbearing walls and bathrooms of the groundfloor, but the first floor can be more flexible.

We readily came to the concept: the centre of the first floor will be an open courtyard with the rooms arranged around. The courtyard is to be covered by a secondary roof, providing shading and a plane for rainwater collection. The secondary roof will consist of several planes in different directions and colours, breaking with the rigid structure of the rest of the building.

The first month of the project has passed and we have had several meeting in which we made some good progress.
Most importantly we formed a great team of architects and engineers: Chris, Shade, Carine, Julia and Barbara. In the next couple of posts I'll introduce all team-members, but this is what we have been doing lately:
At the kick-off meeting at the end of September we went through the answers received earlier from Ashanti Development. This enabled us to understand more about the location and current building.

Gyetiase is a small rural community in Ghana, about 40 kilometers north-east of Kumasi, near Mampong. This area is the Ashanti region which, by virtue of its gold and cocoa production, is the most prosperous region of Ghana. The town is located on a hilltop with a population of about 1800 and a typical family-size of about ten to seventeen. Most families live in one or two roomed huts and spend most of the day outdoors; washing and cooking take place in the open air. With no electricity or running water, daily life is very time-consuming. Women have to go down to the stream to fetch water and firewood, men spend most of the day farming crops as yam and plantin.



The layout of the village is a main street with most building on either side. You can find many churches, a few traditional buildings and a primary and secondary school, but none of these buildings is more than one storey, like our clinic will become.


The ground floor of the clinic has been built and is actually in use, so our design will have to tie into that. It's great that we can use drawings of the existing building, although a few changes have been made during the building works. The extension of the building will hose the volunteers: doctors, teachers and researchers from the UK, and will include bedrooms, bathrooms, living areas, a kitchen and an office.



With the lack of electricity and running water the need for solar energy and rainwater harvesting is eminent, but by researching the local climate and traditions we aim to make the building smarter and more interesting than that.

Introduction

In the next couple of months a group of volunteers from different backgrounds will work together to design the extension to an eye clinic in Ghana. Architects and engineers from London will work together for Architecture for Humanity to design clinic for Ashanti Development. I will try to keep a regular blog to tell you about this exciting project and show you what we are doing.

During the summer of 2007, over two hundred Ashanti men contributed their labour free of charge to build the ground floor of a two-storey clinic/hostel in Gyetiase. Building costs were cut substantially, and the work was finished in record time.

The new building is used for several purposes. First, it is staffed by a state registered midwife or nurse, who provides general healthcare and teaches the villagers about health through occasional workshops.

Second, it provides a base for specialist eye care healthworkers; Ashanti Development is currently sponsoring two village women for five months training at Kumasi Komfo Anonkye Hospital. When their course is complete, they will live in Gyetiase, provide general eyecare and screen the villagers for cataracts and other operable sicknesses. Kumasi Hospital will then send its mobile van to the clinic to perform multiple cataract or other eye operations.

Operations will be funded thanks to the generosity of UK opticians, SpecSavers. London SpecSavers Branches have offered to finance one thousand cataract operations, making an enormous difference to the recipients’ quality of life. SpecSavers will also provide a full range of eye testing equipment for the clinic, together with recycled, graded, secondhand spectacles from their London stores.

In time, the clinic will also be used to enhance the training of outreach healthworkers, trained at Ashanti Development’s expense and stationed in many of the villages around Gyetiase. These healthworkers will be equipped with mobile phones and able to summon hospital transport when necessary.

Finally, the first floor, which has still to be built, will be used to house teachers and other volunteer workers from the UK who may visit Gyetiase from time to time.

Architecture for Humanity is involved in the design for this first floor.