unit-code
There is a huge global dependency on Rwanda’s coffee production, with over 20,000 tons of beans exported every year. This is carried out by vast amounts of manual labour. The project aims to create a sustainable feedback loop within this industry and allow locals to celebrate and enjoy the product of their work while providing educational spaces that train them for the harvest.
The building aims to rethink the current typology of agricultural production. By echoing the cascading typography of the site in the building's form, spaces such as the rooftop are re-appropriated from merely providing shelter into a productive site. This creates dynamic moments for the coffee beans when it travels through the building itself. Situated in a small village in the Western Province, Rwanda, the project aims to support these workers both throughout the harvest season and outside of it by creating spaces where teaching, learning, and production can coexist.
Iterative spaces carved into the landscape that test productive roof surfaces. The cascading roof typology incorporates growing test beds, water collection and irrigation.
Strategies for irrigating the waste coffee pulp water back into fixed beds for growth. These are nestled amongst communal work spaces.
Dynamic moments where the architecture becomes a productive worker, transporting and processing coffee beans throughout the building. These include a centralised washing space and a roasting room.
The cascading nature of the plantation fields is reflected in the structure's form. These spatial strategies follow the movement of the workers as well as the coffee beans on-site.
Roof typologies are reconsidered to create an extra site of production and socialising.