{"id":3154,"date":"2019-02-28T00:29:53","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T00:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/?p=3154"},"modified":"2019-02-28T00:29:53","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T00:29:53","slug":"the-rwandan-design-school-re-shaping-africas-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/2019\/02\/28\/the-rwandan-design-school-re-shaping-africas-future\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rwandan design school re-shaping Africa&#8217;s future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Spending his days designing high-end residences for South Africa&#8217;s ultra rich, architect Tshepo Mokholo was miserable. Craving a change, Mokholo attended the influential <a href=\"https:\/\/www.designindaba.com\/conference\">Indaba Design conference<\/a>in Cape Town in early 2016, and listened to a pitch for the African Design Centre (ADC), a program seeking to shake up the highly unequal business of African architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/style\/article\/addis-ababa-china-construction-style\/index.html\">Skyscrapers, trains and roads: How Addis Ababa came to look like a Chinese city<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;I was immediately sold on what they were trying to do and teach, and I felt they were taking an approach to education and architecture that was not readily accessible anywhere on the continent, maybe anywhere in the world,&#8221; said Mokholo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last summer, the first cohort of ADC graduates completed its inaugural 20-month fellowship in Kigali, Rwanda, with Mokholo among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ten fellows, hailing from eight African nations, are now upending architecture, design and construction across a continent where rapid urbanization and population growth are presenting severe challenges to governments, with the needs of the poorest left unmet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Their signature achievement is the <a href=\"https:\/\/massdesigngroup.org\/work\/design\/ruhehe-primary-school\">Ruhehe Primary School<\/a> in northern Rwanda, where more than 1,000 children now receive an education in a custom-built space, constructed almost entirely from materials sourced 150 kilometers from the site, and honed by builders, carpenters and masons from the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Local methods and talent<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For Mokholo, &#8220;good architecture is a human right.&#8221; And with Africa&#8217;s urban population predicted to soar (a UN report in 2017 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/development\/desa\/en\/news\/population\/world-population-prospects-2017.html\">predicted<\/a> that half of world&#8217;s population growth is likely to occur in Africa by 2050), it&#8217;s also needed urgently. By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/christian_benimana_the_next_generation_of_african_architects_and_designers\/transcript?language=en\">ADC estimates<\/a> 100,000 clinics, 300,000 schools, and over 700 million units of housing will be required for all these new people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A severe shortage of qualified architects and designers has left most sub-Saharan African countries lacking the homegrown expertise needed to build cost-effective infrastructure, and mushrooming slums already blight cities such as Nairobi and Johannesburg.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spending his days designing high-end residences for South Africa&#8217;s ultra rich, architect Tshepo Mokholo was miserable. Craving a change, Mokholo attended the influential Indaba Design conferencein Cape Town in early 2016, and listened to a pitch for the African Design Centre (ADC), a program seeking to shake up the highly unequal business of African architecture. Skyscrapers, trains and roads: How&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/2019\/02\/28\/the-rwandan-design-school-re-shaping-africas-future\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3155,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions\/3155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}