Project № 04 · Cultural

The Oasis

A women's house in Senegal, bamboo, rammed earth, and a courtyard that catches rain.

Location: Senegal
Year: 2020
Programme: Civic centre · UN Women initiative
Role: Architect · design author
Materials: Bamboo, rammed earth, thatch
Studio: Sapienza Università di Roma

Interior view of the central courtyard with bamboo columns and a water pool — fig. 01: Central courtyard. The roof opens above a small pool fed by collected rainwater.

The brief came from a UN Women initiative working in rural Senegal: build a place where women can gather safely, train, and participate in local governance. The architecture had to be modest, replicable, and built from what's locally available.

The plan starts from a 2 × 2 m grid. Four equal modules sit at the cardinal directions of the site, each oriented to a key civic anchor, the city hall, the school, the mosque, the regional road. Between them, the project carves a sheltered courtyard. A large hipped roof, tilted to catch rainwater into a central well, ties everything together.

Six-step concept evolution from rectangle to tilted roof — fig. 02: Six-step concept. Rectangle → axes set to context → four modules → modules shifted, entrances created → roof added → roof tilted to collect water.

Exploded axonometric showing five layers of construction — fig. 03: Exploded axonometric: modular grid → wall framework → transformability → roof framework → cover & landscape.

Plan with four modules around a central well — fig. 04: Plan, 1:100. Two modules host static functions (wash, classroom); two flex with sliding bamboo panels.

The whole project assembles in a week with hand tools. That was the point, the technique is more durable than the building.

Materials & detail

Construction detail of the bamboo and rammed-earth wall, plus cross-section — fig. 05: Construction detail (1:50). Three-layer bamboo roof framework, primary & secondary in *Bambusa vulgaris*, tertiary in wild bamboo. Walls in three-tone rammed earth (black, red, beige). Cross-section shows the cross-ventilation pattern: cool air drawn from the courtyard, warm air vented through the roof oculus.

Exterior render of the completed Oasis at the edge of a grove — fig. 06: Exterior. The Oasis sits between trees, in the "in-between" of the existing landscape.

Two of the four modules have static walls in rammed earth. The other two have sliding bamboo panels, they can open into the courtyard, or close off for privacy. The same two modules carry built-in furniture, also bamboo, aligned to the structural grid.

The roof is the project's signature. Tilted toward the courtyard, it sheds water into a central oculus that drops it directly into a wellhead. In a region where dry seasons are long and predictable, that small detail does the most work the building does.