Pygmy habitat study and proposal of modern architecture derived from the tropical house of Jean Prouvé 1) Different pygmy tribes 2) Traditional housing pygmy 3) The Tropical House of Jean Prouvé 4) Our propisition of mobil home
AYS-1406 AFRICAN Architecture and urban planning TUT 2010
HAMONIC Bathilde 222312 ISA Saint luc de Wallonie Tournai Belgique ORDYNSKI Virginie 222320 ISA Saint luc de Wallonie Tournai Belgique PARPILLON Julie 219579 Ecole d´architecture Paris Val de Seine France
Different pygmy tribes
The BAKA pygmies A people of hunter-gatherers, Baka Pygmies live in the rainforest of Cameroon, Gabon and Congo, together with various peoples of bantu farmers, with whom they exchange goods and have a problematic symbiotic relationship. Like other pygmy groups (Bakola, Babongo, Aka, Bambuti, etc.), the Baka are traditionally nomadic, even though they are undergoing a process of sedentariness under the influence of multiple factors. The first of these factors is massive deforestation, which deprives these peoples of the natural (and symbolic) resources essential for their biological and cultural survival. The researches among the Baka began about ten years ago in a small camp, in the heart of the African rain forest. There the Baka gave the opportunity to share many aspects of their traditional life, like the gathering of food, the hunting activities, the fishing, the music, the ritual ceremonies and the night dances of the forest spirits. During the secret male initiation rite, a long ceremony that decrees the passage to adulthood, gives special powers to the initiates and lets pygmy boys into some of the crucial secrets of the forest and of their own culture. In the periods of the year when the Baka live near the bantu villages and along the tracks, they are exploited and despised by their farmer neighbours, who look upon the Pygmies as goods belonging to them. Victims of racism and exploited in the plantations as very cheap labour, with inadequate diet and many health problems, some Baka groups manage to live a surprisingly serene life, keeping a very strong cultural identity and marking the boundaries between their form of culture and humanity and that of the other Central African peoples.
Food and material gathering expedition in the rainforest.
Crossing of a river on a pirogue dug out of the trunk of a tree.
Traditional housing pygmy 1) Construction materials Construction materials used by the pygmies are essentially derived plant rain forest: wood, vines, bark, leaves. They use the plants of the family «Maranthaceae» because they are abundant in the forest. It’s very large oval leaves which can reach 50cm in length. They are used as a tile plant and placed on a frame consisting of «Olacaceae». These plants have a single stem that can reach 6m high. Pygmy architecture is the architecture of vegetal, which can be summed up by Oleaceae covered by Maranthaceae. However We may be surprised by the limited number of species selected and the lightness of these materials.
2) Different types of housing We can identify two types of housing: Mongulu (these are ephemeral camps, there are two types Botoka (a model for forest) and Gbagala (edge model), and Lobembe (flyingcamps). - LOBEMBE The choice of a place to camp is decided by the group but not by a leader, they follow in the footsteps of the game and set up on a free space near trees to protect themselves from the rain and outside track elephants. Is the name given to a casual camp with hunters of different families. They are sometimes built very fastly to the announcement of a storm or in the middle of a walk in the forest to stay for a night.
The hut for unmarried men is designed as a courtyard whose length varies depending on the number of people involved, each built 1m following his neighbour. Pygmies are pushing «baliveaux» (arching sticks ) in the ground in a straight line. And they make a braided with another stem. The mesh obtained is bent to form a courtyard to covered the sleepers, creepers maintain the curve. The horizontal sticks are added for hanging leaves of Maranthaceae.
It’is the woman who built the couple’s Lobembe the shape of the hut is semi-spherical and closed. The trellis is built in the same way as the single hut but on a circular plan, and sometimes not more than 1m of diameter. The bed is a carpet of leaves on the ground exposed to the attacks of wild animals.
- MONGULU Housing is one installed for a period of harvest of fruit, plants, ceremonies or great hunts. This period can vary from 15 days to several months. They cut some trees on the land chosen for the sun dries the soil moist. It’s built on a square base of about 3 m,in the center women sink into the ground rod whose end forms a ring, the rod bending plant will allow all other stems and weave them together. The entrance will be formed by a tunnel of 1 to 2 meters in length and the leaves are covering the frame as in the hut «Lobembe». The Mongulu For a couple it’s of a smaller size and can be built by a single woman.
Baka woman making a mat by weaving fibers obtained from marantaceae plants
Following inspiration or necessity, the various construction methods can be complementary. The plan of Mongulu is pluriform, it may consist of two or three units side by side with a common entrance, or cell in row.
Approaching roads, pygmies adopt a home-like rectangular «cases» of «grands noirs», this model is halfway between the nomadic and sedentary agricultural. The pygmy up this house in the manner of «Mongulu», the surface varies from 6 to 12m ². Two high poles support the ridge, several stakes for the walls, a door and a window. The roof is in «raphia» and walls are either in sheets or in «poto-poto armé»
The Tropical House The Tropical House designed by the Ateliers Jean Prouvé turned into something tangible through two constructions in Africa, restricted to the sole functions of demonstration houses, pending orders which would never come - symbols, therefore, of an industrial production being forever sidelined in practice, but never actually abandoned by the building contractor of Maxéville. So, as was often the case in Jean Prouvé’s career, these works can be described as prototypes, referring to projects to be disseminated rather than to the state of completion of the edifices in question. The development process combined research involving manufactured homes undertaken for the postwar reconstruction of France, and specific studies earmarked for France’s colonies. If we try to re-create a genealogy, we must thus go back to the late 1930s and those orders for military huts to which Prouvé responded, and their variant for colonial French troops. Then, when the war was over, we must take a look at the experience acquired in the production of huts for war victims being transposed into a study of lightweight dwellings. Lastly, we must appraise, in the colonial house proposal, everything that stems from the on-going maturity of Prouvé’s thinking about standardization and prefabrication, from its effective translation into proven construction typres and into a catalogue of parts based on the modularity principle.Colonial prospects were thus present, in a diffused way, within the Ateliers, merely awaiting actual requests in order to develop research and propositions alike. Protection against the sun’s rays and lowering temperatures inside the house represented the two major problems to be solved. The sunbreaker and the ventilated roof were the two answer that were patiently worked out from blueprint to blueprint. The first sizeable operation was a competition for a complex of education for a complex of educational buildings for Dakar University (August 1947). The project was headed by Henri Prouvé who, as an associate from 1946 on within the Ateliers design department, obtained his architect’s diploma in 1947.
In June and July 1948, the Ateliers Jean ProuvĂŠ undertook a whole raft of studies of demountable buildings designed for the colonies, akin to military huts and emergency units for disaster or war victims. Two forms were tried ans tested: the firth offers a square living area, the second borrowed the form of its oblique walls from canvas tents. Both models were on legs, attesting to their lightness and mobility, and incorporated a natural ventilation device at the top. The first such hut has a load-bearing outer structure made of corner posts and an autonomous abode unit which, being separate, could be centerd or otherwise; the device consisting of sun-shield slats was supported on the facade by posts. The second wavered between the use of self-supporting panels and an articulated structure clad in roofing and facade panelling. In both these projects, various details were much researched and subsequently developed: the salient parts to permit the fixture of the sunbreaker, and those providing ridge ventilation.
All these proposals were hallmarked by the use of a sunshade roof, giving more importance to a large airy space above a ceiling rather than circulation of air actually inside the house. In this, they were similar to Jeanneret’s studies. Nevertheless, what is different is the use of large balconies and verandahs between facade panels and sun-breakers slats. As far as the choice of constructive system is concerned, this is not fixed: there is emphasis on the portico principal, here that of the external frame, elsewhere that of a central post.
The proposition was an ambitious one. It laid down the basic guidelines for colonial constructions designed by the Ateliers Jean Prouvé: interior porticos, natural roof ventilation and aeration, sun breaker with moveable slats, façade panels fitted with insulating material. Nothing was actually built, however. The research focused thenceforth on lightweight constructions, like the huts designed in 1940 for the Corps of Engineers. Here, taking the dimensions into account, it was this arrangement which galvanized the studies: be it the curve and parts of the gently sloping roof, with the pronounced raised elements to guarantee the water tightness of the roof, or the connecting parts between beams and purlins - the gussets. Early in 1949, studies were sufficiently well advanced for two types of colonial house to be designes. Type A had as a characteristic feature a load-bearing structure on the edge of the closed volume. The posts espoused the shape of the corner elements of the demountable huts made for the Corps of Engineers (1940). This project was represented by measures in letters: interior plans (8 x 18 m or 8 x 21 m) and a cross-section, drawing up an inventory of the parts composing the house, featured pierced beams and specified the “canopy” part both salient and protected by the pivoting slats of the sunshields above the railings. Perspectival views gave information about the use of panels, on the facade and as walls, and stressed the shape of the roofing parts, all of a piece.
In the same was as the Type A house, the B was noticeable for the choice of load-bearing structure: here again this latter was peripheral, but in its form it borrowed the line of articulated structures, previously studied for small dwelling-places. The upper beam was left out, replaced by purlins extending the uprights; the ceiling was replaced by panels, incorporated in the same slope. The drawing of the principal parts showed a quest to be economical with materials on the point of articulation. In this proposal we once again find the adaptation on a lesser scale of the research undertaken for the structure of the laboratories’ halls at the Institut de recherches de la sidÊrurgie française at Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1947 - 1952), in particular the form of the continuous demi-porticos and their shape which can be seen outlined in the pencil sketches.
In 1949, the architects Paul Herbé, an architect and town-planner responsible for the territory of Niger, and Jean Le Couteau, together with Jean Demaret, asked Jean Prouvé to design a college in Ouagadougou, and the government building and the law courts in Niamey. To make the viability of the proposal persuasive, the local authorities placed an order with the Ateliers for a demonstration building. All the parts were manufactured at Maxéville and two spans of the edifice were assembled in the factory yard before being dispatched as air freight to Africa. To do this, the parts were made as lightweight as possible, with perforations, and a major use of aluminium for the roofing parts and the sun-breakers. The building in question was designed for the lodgings of the director of the college of Niamey, and the work was carried out in the summer of 1949. The large roof (10 x 26 m) housed two dwelling units - one for daytime living, the other for night-time -, with a patio between the two and a peripheral verandah. Although the competition was won by the architects associated with Jean Prouvé, the constructor, and although one house had proved its feasibility, there was no follow-up. As for the Niamey operation, this one gave rise to a part assembly in the Maxéville factory. The major difference had to do with the fact that the constructions would be supported by reinforced concrete piles: on the side wall, the floor beam appeared with its typical profile incorporating the cantilevered verandahs. The raised building entailed minor adjustments such as the installation of railings for the passageways: here again, aluminium parts were designed to incorporate ventilation grills. The Brazzaville construction site was active for a month. The juxtaposition of the two edifices, their elevation,the verandahs and the footbridge linking them emphasized the originality of the project. Combined with higher costs than those for a traditional construction, this originality was in all probability one of the reason which meant that Brazzaville operation went no further. It seemed somewhat eclectic: the roof ventilation system and the pierced continuous beams corresponded to the definitive version; the parts of the building given extra height were disparate; there were no balconies verandahs or sun-shields; the load-bearing structure rested on central posts. This mixture of finished parts with others still in the blueprint stage left room for scepticism about the content of this study.
Once prefabricated in France, Jean Prouvé’s tropical houses were designed to be easy to transport. It was not their brief to be nomadic or moveable, which might be suggested by their new status, since they were demounted, fifty years after being put up. But they are once more becoming what they originally were: demonstration buildings illustrating, today as yesterday, Jean Prouvé’s inventiveness.
Our proposition We will realize, by based us on the model of the tropical houses of ProuvĂŠ, a portable habitat for pygmies. We consider, for the creation of this house, a traditional family in Mongulu: 1 couple with 3 children in low age.
Couple
The dwellings must be as lightweight as possible, for the transport, so the prefab piece will be make with perforations, a major use of aluminium for the roofing parts and the carrying partitions in the corners. The roof is ventilated, encouraging the circulation of air between ceiling and roof. The structure, to ensure a perennially to it, will be made with prefab units primarily out of aluminium. For the other parts of the building, we make calls with the know-how of the Pygmies. The non-bearing partitions, which separate from outside, will be make in weaving of raffia.
Source
3 Children
Simple and light construction
section
plan
Each family has its home, consists of some elements of wood and aluminum. This structure can be assemble and disassemble without tools, because the elements can be encase. The structure may be transported or leave on the camp and reuse a few weeks later. Each family can personalize their home by adding vegetal walls as in their traditional habitat. • • • • •
a house consists of 6 studs of wood a set of small wooden beams a floor made of 6 boqrds ( size of 1.5 X 0.66 m) 4 panels, the structure of the roof a roof which can be bend