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.