Children’s House Kaira Looro Competition in Senegal

The building is based on the concept of the traditional regional settlement typology, the Casamance house and village. This type of settlement consists of a series of houses, grouped around a central space, usually with a tree, under which the main stages of the community’s social life take place.

The courtyard develops right from the porch extending the play area to a large lawn equipped with seating and trees that lends itself to a wide variety of activities. The two courts are divided for functional purposes, to ensure the intimacy of the children, but in the wall that divides them we wanted to practice a cut, a visual connection with the people of the village, with their friends and relatives, to express the support of the whole community. We designed the courtyard for the children to stimulate their vitality, shaping the fence with curved and straight walls and cutting it with a system of openings that interact with sunlight.