PHYSICAL & EPHEMERAL WASTE
Advanced Studio in collaboration with Roy Kim
YSOA | Martin Finio & Francis Kéré | TRASH | Fall 2022
The proposed project addresses the issue of physical and cultural waste management in Ganvie, a city on Lake Nokoue in Benin, where all human activity, construction, and culture takes place on the water. (The Venice of Africa)
The architecture utilizes the abundant Water Hyacinth plant by treating and recycling it. The seven floating interventions are built using only local materials, such as concrete, bamboo, wood, bolts, and ropes, and traditional building methods enhance the community’s activities on the water. The project establishes a wooden floating platform module tied to columns and equipped with a conveyor belt system to move elements during the Water Hyacinth treatment process. The final product of this process is a Water Hyacinth fabric that can be used to create detachable temporary enclosures or sold in the extended floating market.
In context to this project, the architecture explicitly understands that the people of Ganvie know where they are and when they are in relation to their values of respect to time, place, and culture. The proposal empowers the collective, allowing the community to grow, and providing Ganvie with resilience.
Pictures taken from traveling to Ganvie, Benin
“Nothing defines a nation more than it’s culture. The culture is the unifying force that brings the peolpe, the economy, and the politics into one” - Ghandi
Cultural, societal & economic system of relationships with respect to time and space
In this space and time diagram of cultural, societal, and economic relationships for Ganvie, we notice that in pre-colonial times, historically, the city and the country had the inclusion of culture and circular economies with the production of organic waste. Now, during a time of great development, the imports of Western development methods create a gap disconnecting the people from their environment and past, producing slums and production waste. If this continues, the future could only increase the exclusion of the place’s history and culture, creating trash and cultural waste. This project originates from the question of how this development can be done differently; what if there was an in-between space and time relationship and an architecture that would allow for open-ended possibilities of development while giving people of Ganvie Resiliency and empowering and elevating their culture?
Tracing cultural and economic activities with respect to time
Through mapping current activities happening in Ganvie, including Water well, Pirogues, Fishing, Commerce, and school activities, and projecting water hyacinth and water level activities at different times of the day and seasons of the year; it appears that all these activities have a relationship that necessitates a different way of understanding. These activities do not have a pyramidal or hierarchical relationship, with an activity at the top and several at the bottom. These activities happen in layers, they are layered with activities merging and nurturing each other based on time. Time happens differently in Ganvie than in any other European of Western Place. Instead of the traditional hours’ markers of noon, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock; Activities in Ganvie start at 5 AM and keep going around the African time.
Model picture illustrating the essential elements of the intervention (rope & pulley)
Diagram illustrating the logic behind the architectural intervention
Architectonic drawings illustrating the assembly of parts on the roof level (above) floor level (below)
Illustartions representing the connection details on the roof level (above) floor level (below)
Along with the local material used, such as bamboo, wood, metal bolts, and concrete columns from nearby sites, this proposal uses ropes, pulleys, and the produced Water Hyacinth fabric as part of the architecture. The assemblage of the pulleys, ropes and wooden platforms allows the architecture to always be flexible to additions and subtractions of floating platforms; while the people’s rotational movement of the pulleys using their bodies and ropes allows for the architectural proposal to empower the collective and the culture of making, producing of water hyacinth fabric already present in ganvie. On the medium scale and assembly level, wooden platforms manufactured by the local boat shop come together around the planted concrete columns. These elements are stabilized using wooden planks with negative and positive connections and bolts. The top of the concrete column supports the double-layered roof structure made out of a wooden grid and water hyacinth fabrics. Between the double-layered roof, a pulley can be attached to the end of the top of the column. This pulley, along with the roof system, works as a grid for circulating, hanging, and suspending water hyacinths and other materials during the treatment of the waste; similar to how a conveyor belt works, while the floating platforms at the ground level mitigate between water level changes just like a boat would.
“Europe has Watches, but Africa has Time” - Youssef Denial
Site diagram illustrating the system of interrelationship of the series interventions and the site
Plan perspective of the intervention at the existing local boat manufacturer and floating market
Boat Shops & Floating Markets
“What can Architecture do in Ganvie”? - Martin Finio
Collecting & Soaking
Plan (above) and Section perspective (below) of the first step of managing the water hyacinth waste through collecting and soaking
This is the first location for the treatment of water hyacinth waste; the floating platforms borrow the same technics and materials used for boat manufacturing in Ganvie. Moreover, bamboo sticks are used to form two enclosures for sanitation and one enclosure for storage space. In this floating structure water hyacinth is collected using pulleys and soaked in the lake water for cleaning, then hung on ropes to dry.
Rendering of the first step of managing the water hyacinth waste through collecting and soaking
Heating & Stomping
Plan (above) and Section (below) perspective of the second step of managing the water hyacinth waste through heating and stomping
The process works in the three spaces along the structure, with the bottom space being for storage, the middle one for heating with a central hearth and the last space for stomping. The storage space of water hyacinth is enclosed with bamboo sticks and happens on floating platforms. The hearth for heating the water hyacinth is located on earth ground and enclosed by mud bricks sourced locally from the earth. The stomping activity happens on wooden raised floors and is also enclosed by mud bricks.
Rendering of the second step of managing the water hyacinth waste through heating and stomping
Plan perspective of the extension of the existing water well (above) and proposal of the third step of managing water hyacinth waste through threading and weaving structure (below)
Water Wells & Weaving
Section perspective of the extension of the existing water well (above) and proposal of the third step of managing water hyacinth waste through threading and weaving structure (below)
The section of the existing water well extension (above) illustrates how the connection between the floating platforms can be made with the existing concrete structure of the water well. The pulleys are here used to extend the water hoses between the double-layered roof to reach the perimeters of the extension. We can imagine that once water levels rise in Ganviem, now instead of people not being able to adequately get potable water. This communal activity and its culture are preserved, since the floating platforms would go up and down following the lake level and the water hoses can extend using the pulleys.
The section of the weaving and threading structure (bottom) illustrates the process of weaving happens. Moreover, the pulleys, column, and floating platform assembly enable the connection of water hyacinth fabric to temporarily enclose spaces on the platforms based on activities.
Rendering of the last step of managing the water hyacinth waste through threading and weaving
This is the first location where the proposal initiates from, with the boat shop on the north of the illustration, which would help produce the floating platforms using the same technics and materials as boat manufacturing. The existing market would be extended using simple rows of concrete columns, around which the floating platforms come together forming a larger floating floor on which the commercial activities and culture of selling and buying on water would be celebrated.
Cultural Rituals
Plan (above) and section perspective (below) of the intervention around the existing ritualistic tree
This proposal recognizes the site around the existing ritualistic tree as an important part of the spiritual culture of ganviens. The intervention provides the simple construction and material system as the former proposals of the project to give a stage and roof between which the ritualistic activities would happen while giving respect to the existing tree. Therefore allow the people of ganvie to celebrate their cultural rituals on land and on water.
Temporality / Spatialty
This project understands that creating a culture takes time; similarly, maintaining and empowering one also takes time. This intervention is essentially about time. As we say in Africa: “Europe has watches, but we have time”
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