sweeping bamboo roof to shape rammed-earth community center in senegal

a familiar typology grows to the scale of a village

A broad bamboo roof dips toward the ground around the winning proposal for the 2026 Kaira Looro Architecture Competition, tracing a loose semicircle around an open gathering space. Designed by Greece-based Afroditi Ioannidou and Vladimir Gligorovski of K-Studio, the community center takes its starting point from the traditional impluvium houses of Senegal’s Casamance region, where domestic life is organized inward around a central courtyard that gathers people, light, and rainwater. Here, that arrangement expands from the scale of the home to the scale of the village, all within a structure of rammed-earth.

The proposal has been awarded first prize in this year’s competition, organized by humanitarian nonprofit Balouo Salo around the design of a community center for rural southern Senegal. The brief asked young architects and students to imagine a place for education and collective life that could eventually be constructed by local communities themselves, using accessible techniques and natural materials without heavy machinery or specialist labor. The first-prize design is now set to move beyond the competition drawings, with construction of the winning project included as part of the award.

first prize | image by Afroditi Ioannidou, Vladimir Gligorovski

one roof gathers the community beneath it

Architects Ioannidou and Gligorovski organize the competition-winning center along an elongated, gently twisting arc. A library and study area sit alongside a larger community space, workshop and service areas, while each opens toward the graveled clearing at the center. The effect is somewhere between courtyard and amphitheater: people can occupy the rooms independently during the day, then turn toward the middle for larger meetings, performances or village events.

Much of the project’s character comes from the roof above. Its two pitches rise unevenly along the arc before dropping low toward either end, creating deeper shade where people can gather outside the enclosed rooms. The gap around the raised ridge lets hot air escape while drawing cooler air from below, allowing the center to rely on passive ventilation. Beneath the outer metal cladding, a layer of thatch adds insulation, while paired bamboo columns and beams form the primary structure.

first prize | image by Afroditi Ioannidou, Vladimir Gligorovski

simple construction methods

The architects developed that system around construction methods that could remain relatively simple on site. Locally harvested bamboo is joined with rope and galvanized wire, while independent rammed-earth volumes are formed from laterite soil found in the region. Small diamond-shaped openings perforate sections of these walls, bringing air and filtered daylight through the heavier earthen enclosures. Bamboo shutters can open the rooms almost entirely, allowing the covered spaces to expand into one larger pavilion when the community needs them.

Rain is treated with similar economy. Water falling across the large roof is directed toward handwashing stations, while the gravel at the center allows water to infiltrate into the ground during Casamance’s rainy season. The familiar inward-looking logic of the impluvium house therefore carries through the project in several ways: the center gathers people beneath its roof while gathering water through the same form.

first prize | image by Afroditi Ioannidou, Vladimir Gligorovski

the second- and third-prize winners

Kaira Looro’s brief placed those practical decisions at the center of the competition. The proposed building is intended for a rural region where villages average around 1,500 inhabitants and infrastructure remains limited, so the center is expected to accommodate everyday learning and meetings alongside workshops and larger community activities. Its construction is conceived as a participatory process as well, giving residents a role in assembling and later maintaining the building.

The jury awarded second prize to Marta Kuczynska and Jakub Czak of Poland, whose rectangular proposal wraps flexible rooms and handwoven pivoting panels around a shaded communal area. Third prize went to a Colombian team — Karol Eliana Cuellar Narváez, Jhuliana Giraldo, Juan Sebastian Piedrahita, Juan Santiago Uribe and Oscar Valencia — for a partially excavated crescent of rammed earth that uses the ground itself to temper the interior climate.

Across the three schemes, shade and self-construction emerge repeatedly as architectural tools, though the first-prize proposal makes its clearest move by enlarging a local domestic type into a piece of shared village infrastructure.

second prize | image by Marta Kuczynska, Jakub Czak

third prize | image by Karol Eliana Cuellar Narváez, Jhuliana Giraldo, Juan Sebastian Piedrahita, Juan Santiago Uribe, Oscar Valencia

project info:

project: Kaira Looro 2026 Community Center (first prize)
designers: Afroditi Ioannidou, Vladimir Gligorovski
location: Casamance, southern Senegal
competition: Kaira Looro Architecture Competition 2026
organizer: Kaira Looro / Balouo Salo
status: winning proposal

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