a Catalan businessman proposed me to collaborate with him
on a project of the development of a vocational school in Ethiopia.
He proposed me a very ambitious project,
a project intending to involve people with different skills, a project where everyone puts his expertise,
expertise to one great social purpose named "Melaku Center" - the first professional education centre in this country.
The project name, Melaku, that means Angel in Amharic, the official language of the country
refers to two people: Angel, the catalan businessman promoting the project;
and the other Angel, that lives in Ethiopia and is a Basque missionary and who is the source of the first inspiration.
They seduced me with this the idea of doing a vocational school project where young Ethiopians would have an opportunity
to work and study in the same place and so the students would leave the centre
with a professional educational and a business experience.
The project was joined by other specialists who came to work with us side by side - for example a specialist in professional education
or an expert in communications who made the implementation of the project possible.
A multidisciplinary team, that would create an amazing synergy.
I accepted with two conditions:first that the same energy that was put into the educational project and the implementation
of the centre will also be done with a respect to architecture and second the fact that the project is in Africa
doesn´t not mean in any case lower quality of design or innovation, although the financial resources were limited.
I remember the day they showed me the site...
The project is located in the city of Mekelle and it has an extensive surface
that can be compared to the size of three city blocks of Barcelona.
And so the first thing we had to do was to find a strategy of how to start this small educational town development from nothing.
We started a research in our studio about African culture and traditions. After a lot of research,
we discovered that there is a common element in the architecture and design in Africa that is the fractal scale.
And now many of us would ask yourselves, as I asked myself by that time:
what is the fractal scale?
to understand quickly what is the fractal we can look at a tree and after that to one of its leaves
we can see that somehow, the structure of the tree and the leave resemble a lot.
and this phenomenon is what is called the fractal scale.
Fractals have been generally studied by mathematicians that found in them
a way to explain the geometry of nature.
Fractals were discovered by Benoit Mandelbrot, an American mathematician that
believed that these geometries were more natural and intuitive than
the artificial objects from traditional Euclidean geometry.
In Africa, fractals are everywhere!
we can find them in the hairstyle designs, the wood and steel crafts, and even in the religious symbols.
We also find them in architecture and planning.
Ron Eglash, a mathematician from the United States,
that studies the relationship between mathematics and culture
wrote this book, African Fractals
and also spoke about it in TED Global 2007 in Africa, the only TED Global held in Africa.
He spoke about how he travelled around the Continent discovering
this phenomenon in different countries.
For example, these villages in Cameroon with circular houses
that most of you have seen for sure,
we can see how the surrounding streets and walls are shaped with the same geometry.
Or the streets of Cairo, where we see how the smaller parts of the city resemble the larger
we had found with this research a way to read the site and to study its code
but we believed that we had to go further
and that our architectural and formal proposal
had to have a relationship with a small element that would respond
to the necessities of the users.
We wanted to find a way to do a master plan
but at the same time to do the small piece
so we could bring a solution for the future students and workers.
After a lot of research and not drawing anytihing during one month,
we based the project on a fractal hexagonal grid
where the volumes create small communities
and are connected by a scalar hierarchy circulation mesh.
From the program point of view,
the classrooms are placed on the west side of the site
and are complemented with workshops.
in the upper part, there is the administration and a library.
At the center of the site are the dining rooms and kitchens.
Furthermore in the same project there is a kindergarten, a pharmacy
a health care center, a small hotel, a supermarket and a mechanic shop
where the students can practice and develop themselves
apart from providing a service to the community.
Once we had finished this first part, we decided to travel to Ethiopia
to present our idea to different agents.
The truth is that they liked a lot the fact that we integrated
all this research about their culture in the base on the project
but the next question that we all were asking ourselves was:
how are we going to build this?
The missionary Angel guided us through the centenary villages
that are in the same area of the project
and we saw how these houses are placed on the landscape
on stone walls and with eucalyptus wood roofs covered
with green roofs made of recycled materials.
In our project, this is the basic cell of 3 volumes
where the classrooms have cross ventilation
and are connected with the porches.
In the construction, we used concrete bricks
for two reasons: one because it is a way of reinterpreting the use of stone
and also for a resources reason because a machine to make these bricks was donated.
on top of these, we placed a wood structure and green roofs that
collect the rain water and bring it to tanks to recycle it.
on top of the porches, there is a network of solar panels
that collect the most abundant energy resource in Ethiopia
and Africa in general, that is the sun.
This project will become an ecosystem of knowledge and energy
that will grow like a nature.
Next year, when some of these modules will be already operating,
the school will be able to operate independently because
the master plan design allows it.
This project was for me a personal discovery and also inthe way how we architects
can be a part of processes to change the world
in a practical and real way, not just theoretical.
Apart from this, Ethiopia has become an essential part of my life
because I met my girl who is here with me
and who also changed my life.
Once we had finished this project,
I decided to send it to Ron Eglash, the American mathematician,
in a thankful way because his work was a big inspiration
for the project
he liked it a lot and since then we´ve had a good relationship
exchanging information about fractals and about Africa.
In fact, in one of the multiple emails that we crossed,
he told me: Xavier, I reccomended your name for a university project in Angola
and I said: this cannot be happening to me...
but after a while we received an email of a US foundation
inviting us to present a proposal to develop the largest campus of this country.
This is the site of the project, it is large surface on the central highland
of Angola.
To get a sense of the surface, it is as big as the Retiro Park in Madrid
We had the previous experience of the Melaku Center that guided us
in how to get closer to a totally different culture from ours.
But... in this case, the clients gave us two important points
that we had to follow.
One was that we had to incorporate a central building
that was meant to be called the Wisdom Center, the central building of the campus
and another, an idea called the "pools of light"
that refers to this image:
That is a real situation in Angola and many countries in Africa:
to see a group of students studying at 3 am under a street light
because they don´t have electricity at home.
These reference points were joined with our research
until we found these drawings, that are very interesting,
coming from the Chokwe tribe in the same area
where the project was going to be developed.
These drawings, called Lusona, are done on the sand
at the hunting camps, under the shade of the trees or around a fire
and have a very important meaning that relates to the basis of a University,
that is the fact of transferring knowledge from one generation to the next
But this even made more sense when we saw that these drawings
are done by marking points on the sand and then
tracing lines around them
So summing up this with the idea of the pools of light
it was integrated in the master plan marking these points
that grow from the central point, the Wisdom Center
and spread into the landscape with a rippling effect.
On top of these points, we started tracing this fractal mesh
that collects the different pieces of program of the University
the master plan has two main axes: learning and living
and from these, the fractal mesh diminishes.
Here is the central building, the Wisdom Center,
where all the connections are concentrated
and around this building and the others, we proposed
a series of greenery that needs low maintenance because
there are only local species.
On top of the buildings, we placed green roofs that also collect
water from the rain to bring it to the canals and also to
act like a landscape element
And also the project has a network of solar panels that help it to work
and to light up the pools of light at night.
In this case, the fractals brought us from a tradition
up to the planning of a university,
both symbols of transferring knowledge.
Or we could say it in another way,
from mathematics to architecture.
And this is the way how we link in our studio the projects
with the specific place using the popular knowledge, the vernacular,
with the innovation to transform them into a contemporary design.
Tradition and innovation are the two faces of the same coin,
and we believe that evolution is the combination of both.
One of the first geniuses that spoke about this was Benjamin Franklin
by saying: "Originallity is the art of concealing your sources"
architect Antonio Gaudi also spoke about this saying in a very simple way:
"Originality comes the origin"
The term Glocal also refers to this: to think global and to act local
but what we do is thet we act globally and think locally.
In our globalized world, where everybody seem to speak the same language,
dress in a similar way and eat the same,
looking at local cultures and traditions is every day more and more important.
All these projects, designed for different people, opportunities and situations,
aim to be the combination of the past and the future,
from my point of view, these are examples of how the combination
of the knowledge of the local architecture and traditions
with the new technologies and innovation can create
a sustainable evolution in Architecture,
thank you!