Award Cycle: 1978-1980 Cycle
Status: Award Recipient
Country of origin: Senegal
Location: Nianing, Senegal
Client: Senegal Ministry of Education
Architect: UNESCO / Breda Dakar
Completed: 1977
The teachers at this regional training centre for 80 youths developed a simple, low-cost, low-technology structural system, based upon a UNESCO prototype, which they have used to construct their own buildings. Solid, load bearing sand and cement block walls, and masonry arches, parallel to one another, support short-span barrel vaults. The vaults, whose thickness at the crown is only a little over 4 centimetres, were formed using three layers of cement mortar stabilised with wire mesh at the top of the vault. Rounded plywood struts were used to support the shuttering formed from millet matting. Buttresses counteract the horizontal thrust of the vaults.