Project: African Bamboo Growth Economy: Le Kinkeliba Foundation

The project aims to stem rural‐urban migration and the exodus of Senegalese youth to Europe through the teaching of dryseason agro‐forestry techniques and economies, within the setting of an artist and research camp. The growth of bamboo clumps, as well as the landscape of production and harvesting is adapted to passively provide shade and wind‐break to buildings and people. Basic necessities of water, shade and shelter organize the colony into clusters not dissimilar from the traditional African village, while redefining its aesthetic based on the means of felling, curing and drying of this native species of bamboo.
Though only 1% of Senegal's GDP, forest products support almost half of poor rural households. Senegal has few export crops, primarily cotton and charcoal, which contribute to mass deforestation. The Foundation will reinforce other piecemeal efforts by the EU and Peace Corps in stewardship of the adjacent Niokolo‐Koba National Park, one of Senegal's few remaining dry forests and an UNESCO endangered World Heritage Site and biosphere. Micro‐projects, which have been operating for years with villages in tense relationship to strict conservation policies, will share space on‐site for collaboration. The campus is planned to occupy a gently sloping hillside in Eastern Senegal over the Gambia River. When regional agricultural production slows in the dry season, the encampment offers training to learn to live, and earn locally. Ideal bamboo siting guides pathways, shelter, gravity‐fed piping, erosion control and bamboo clearance and root barriers. These vital infrastructures are exposed and consolidated into a single cellular system, juxtaposing formal boundaries with the productive landscape. Old and new growth bamboo form large‐brimmed roofs and structures, self‐similar yet autonomous for ease of maintenance and flexible space. Their aggregation over time, subordinate to growth cycles and degrees of weathering, maintains a consistent bamboo grain that defines an iconic sense of place and communal ownership, while acknowledging its temporality. Scaled with an eight meter spread, thirteen meters in height, mature culms creak and bow above a bamboo mat, caked in dry banco mud, connecting studios and residences and exhibiting outdoor art. As an addition to Le Kinkeliba's highly successful medical facilities, schools and dormitories, the Foundation is not about the creation of art as artifact. Rather it is the synergies of locals, artists and researchers, putting aside discussions of Western institutionalization, and focusing instead on participation outside their everyday cultures, for both native and foreign, amid the Foundation's unique materiality.