Cluster-Based Planning: The Key to Better Urban Living
“Architecture is not the outcome of drawings but of lived choices shaped around place, ritual and rhythm.” Cities across West and Northwest Africa are expanding fast. Too often, that growth flattens local identity, fragments community life, and intensifies ecological pressure. Yet it need not. The urban cluster offers a grounded alternative: compact, walkable, and materially […]
Bamboo Urbanism So Far: Powerful Takeaways and Surprising Lessons
The enthusiasm for bamboo in West African urban design has been both exhilarating and sobering. We’ve seen workshops, pilot blocks, and research units rise. We’ve heard declarations of a “new material age.” But what has this bamboo moment really taught us? It has taught us that no single material is a magic bullet. Bamboo is […]
Procurement Unleashed: A Material Breakthrough
In cities from Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso to Bamenda in Cameroon, a quiet revolution is taking root. Not with slogans, but with soil. Not with steel, but with stalks. The age of carbon-heavy construction is starting to lose its grip. But whether this transformation becomes mainstream depends not only on imaginative design. It hinges on […]
From Waste to Wonder: How Bamboo Supports Circular Cities
In an era when cities expand like wildfire across field and forest, and the line between dwelling and damage grows thin, the vision of a circular city is no longer just hopeful—it is needful. Circular cities do not sprawl wastefully outward but fold resources back into themselves. They tread lightly, regenerate swiftly, and leave no […]