The Ministry of Urban Planning of Habitat of Senegal, commissioned this project of a lecture building at the University Alioune Diop by IDOM, which recently has been announced among the 20 classified for the AGA KHAN award for architecture 2019. This building, thought as a place of protection and shade for its students, is inspired by a large tree in the center of the campus of the Alioune Diop University.
For this project, IDOM has designed the building taking into account the extreme conditions of the place, making a sustainable building, which responds to all the basic needs of climatic comfort, as well as manages to solve the lack of water and sewerage with infiltration ponds with vegetation that collects rainwater, all with an effective design and which fits effectively with the arid context in which it is located.
 

Description of project by IDOM

In Senegal, shade and water are everything. This lecture-room block project, a close relative of another in Gaston Berger, San Luis, which was commissioned by the Ministry of Education and the World Bank, is set in the city of Bambey, located 120 km west of Dakar. With a population of 20,000, Bambey stands out for its peanut and cattle farming, itsscarce urban infrastructures and the surrounding harsh life conditions.

The University of Bambey is around 5 km away from the metropolitan area, occupying an area of 64 Ha and catering for 2,000 students. Its buildings, erected between 2004 and 2007, have seen their capacity reduced due to the growing numbers of the student body. Therefore, the extension project was calculated for 1,500 students, with lecture rooms for 50 and 100 people, a 500 seat lecture hall, laboratories, computer rooms and offices for the teaching body, all distributed over an enclosed built-up area of 4,200 m2 and 11,500 m2 of urbanized area.

The project aims to respond to this context as a perfect machine, beautiful in its efficiency and without an engine.We found inspiration on campus by reproducing a great tree as a contributor of shelter, which would offer shade, coolness and comfort to its users without energy consumption. We developed the project from its cross-section, providing the building with a large double roof and a great lattice on the south façade, an L-shaped shield laying on its back, which avoids direct solar radiation but is permeable to air. This shield creates a Venturi effect generating a constant air flow between the building envelope and the lecture rooms, reducing the interior temperature by 10-15 ºC degrees, a change from the outside 40-45 ºC. 

The building is both simple and repetitive in its construction, of a scale commensurate to the campus, very practical and integrated into the environment whilst generating optimal conditions for protection against the extreme climate. The roof is like a double skin supported by steel lattice beams: a metal sandwich panel with insulation on top,as a first barrier against heat and solar radiation, and a dropped ceiling of mineralised fibres on the inside, generating two layers with ventilation between them. For the south façade, we created a large latticework, permeable to air, which eliminates any solar incidence towards the interior and acts as a great filter of solar radiation, extreme in this environment, but still allowing enough light through for the interior functional needs. We planted citronella grass in the cavity between the two skins to avoid the presence of malaria-bearing mosquitoes and to freshen up the space. Complementary, the roof is extended into a 10 meter long canopy, covering a wide exterior area, sheltering students when not in class.

The combination of the double roof and the double-skin façade, having 1 and 3 meter cavities respectively, makes it possible to create a breeze: the heat concentrated on the outer skin of the façade ends up flowing under the roof, eased by the inclination of the latter. This  system allows for a high percentage of outside heat to be dissipated while at the same time generating a constant flow of air through the cavity of the building’s envelope.

To solve the lack of sewage and rainwater networks, we incorporated infiltration rafts with vegetation that collect rainwater by means of different-sized basalt-lined exterior canals. These retain sediments and reduce the speed of the water. The rafts can be interconnected in the event of saturation and are laid out in keeping with the surroundings as a natural meander, favouring the natural development conditions of native vegetation.

A purification system by means of activated sludge allows the purification of waste waters, which, once purified, are discharged to the same rafts. The used sludge will be reused as agricultural fertilizer. 

Lastly, we wanted the project to be sensitive to the social component. For this purpose, we designed a façade made up of blocks with triangular perforations that could be prefabricated in situ by the local workforce. And so, the 20,000 concrete pieces, similar in size to a conventional concrete block, were built manually on site by means of a stainless steel mould and then air-dried. The construction of the 2,000 m2 of the south elevation lattice employed over a hundred workers from Bambey for 6 months.

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Architects
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IDOM. Javier Pérez Uribarri, Federico Pardos Auber
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Collaborators
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Beatriz Salvador Pico
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Client
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Ministère de l’Urbanisme de l’Habitat de Sénégal
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Budget
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€ 5,993,927 / $ 4,900,162
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Area
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7.533 m²
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Dates
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2012-2017
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Venue
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Bambey, bite postale 30. Region de Diourbel. Senegal
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Federico Pardos Auber (Barcelona, ​​1970). Architect by the architecture school of Paris-La-Seine, outstanding cum-laude in the final project. Award-winning architect at the Aga Khan awards 2019 (Kazan, Tatarstan, September 2019), at the XIV Spanish Architecture and Urban Development Biennial 2018 (Santander, July 2018), at the 2018 World Architectural News Awards (London, November 2018) and at the LEAF Awards 2018 (Frankfurt, November 2018) for the work of the new classroom for Bambey University in Senegal, promoted by the Ministry of Higher Education and funded by the World Bank.

He joined IDOM in 2000 as a project manager, since 2010 he is Partner Architect and is currently the director of IDOM SENEGAL. As project manager, among his most outstanding works are:

New classrooms for the universities of Bambey and Saint Louis in Senegal, financed by the World Bank and promoted by the Ministry of Higher Education of Senegal. Project, management and construction management of Diamniadio digital technology park, in Dakar (Senegal), over an area of ​​25 Ha, which includes a Tier III data center, offices, incubators and services, as well as urban and landscape planning, financed by the African Development Bank and promoted by the Ministry of Telecommunications of Senegal. Brazzaville Technology Park, in the Republic of Congo, financed by AfdB; the project of a new 500-room, four-star hotel in Pointe Sarène, Senegal, for the RIU hotel chain. New headquarters for Certest R&D laboratories in San Mateo de Gállego (Zaragoza) that includes ISO5 cleanrooms and biosafety laboratories. Project of the new water company headquarters "AGUR" in Anglet, France. Renovation and rehabilitation of buildings of the European Parliament of Strasbourg. Director of the Zaragoza pavilion project at Expo Shanghai 2010. Technical consultancy for the evaluation of a project to regroup the UN delegations in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a new location. Reconstruction work management of the Zaragoza 2008 international exhibition site in new urbanization and underground parking for 2,500 spaces.

In collaboration with Zaha Hadid Architects he has been responsible for the drafting of the interior architecture project of the Bridge Pavilion of Expo 2008 and later for the reconversion studies in museum space. He has participated in conferences in different professional forums and his work has been published in several specialized magazines.

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Published on: May 6, 2019
Cite: "New Alioune Dio University Lecture Building by IDOM, selected for AGA KHAN prizes 2017-2019" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/new-alioune-dio-university-lecture-building-idom-selected-aga-khan-prizes-2017-2019> ISSN 1139-6415
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