Previous experience made the architects to base Paula’s House upon a flexible design strategy. The architectural focus was kept on the building’s program, which allowed for fundamental changes during the construction process, leading to a successful end result. Space for Changes by Steen Andersen
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“It’s a bit like the kids game where you fold a piece of paper, and one draws the head, and another the upper body, and a third one the legs. One can see what has been done previously, but one does not have the entire background.” – Pi Ekblom, Architect, Masanga Architects, ASF-SE. The experience from Brown House and Monkey House were highly valuable in the designing and building of Paula’s House. Masanga Architects decided only to outline the main idea and a range of construction principles in advance. This enabled a continuous adaptation of the project to the actual circumstances once the teams were in Masanga. In this way, the house took shape as the process went along, depending on the choice of materials, discussions with the craftsmen and the decisions made by the different construction managers. Even so, the building appears much as imagined, but more importantly both the craftsmen and end users are overall happy with the result. In three phases, Masanga Architects went to Masanga to build Paula’s House — Architecture Sans Frontières Denmark (ASF-DK)’s third building for the Masanga Hospital. The first architect on the project, Anne Katrine Røien, expanded an existing foundation, flipped the orientation of the plan and built the walls. The second architect, Tue Bondo Arentoft, built the roof construction, which was also changed on-site. This time at the request of the craftsmen, who wished to use the same construction as for the roof of Brown House. The final team finished off the project by completing the roof, adding doors and windows and securing the house with metal bars. The team of craftsmen, and in particular the foreman, Abdulai Foday aka Mr. Stop — a student of construction engineering in Freetown, came to be the constant
element in a process otherwise characterised by a repeated shift from architect to architect, each with his or her own approach to the project. Bamboo — the Final Battle Two Swedish architects, Pi Ekblom and Cecilia Rudström of Architecture Sans Frontières Sweden, made up the third team, responsible for executing the finishing details and security measures of the building. Based on interviews with the future users, they enclosed the building’s public areas for security reasons, yet maintained the idea of four dwellings under one roof. They also changed the roof cladding made in the previous phase. “When we arrived, the craftsmen had laid half the roof in bamboo with a specific technique that Tue used. But the bamboo was beginning to crack and the roof was not tight. They don’t tend to maintain their buildings well in Sierra Leone, and we were certain that the roof wouldn’t last.” (Ekblom) Mr Stop and the craftsmen shared this opinion. In general, bamboo is not appreciated as a valid construction material by the community, other than for fencing and animal sheds. Even so, Masanga Architects have used it in all projects, because it is cheap, renewable, grows in the back yard and also has considerable aesthetic appeal. Though Mr. Stop was the foreman on the whole building process, he did not feel he could express his opinion, not even when encouraged to do so by the architects. “People were coming to the house to start working with us. Then a new worker comes that I don’t like, but this is Africa, I don’t have the authority to say, I don’t like this man. Then the architects want to build a bamboo roof, but I don’t have the power to say: I don’t like that bamboo. Right. I’ll always be behind those in power and just do what they