The CBF [Centre pour le Bien-etre des Femmes] Women's Health Centre in Burkina Faso was created by AIDOS, an Italian NGO fighting for Women's Rights in Developing Countries. The AIDOS project is just one of the group's international programmes focused on contrasting the diffusion of Female Genital Mutilation/Excision [FGM]. The social/health-services program developed by AIDOS, together with its local partners, focuses on providing educational services, information and awareness about women's sexual and reproductive rights in Ouagadougou's Sector 27, a peripheral urban area settled by a once rural population. The architectural project is a direct response to a social programme that called for the realisation of a building complex capable of hosting a variety of activities in very harsh circumstances.
Completed in 18 months by a local builder, working under the direct supervision of FAREstudio, the CBF is a functional and cost-effective answer to the needs expressed by AIDOS, while simultaneously and primarily representing a centre of aggregation and identity for the entire local community. The technological and typological responses offered by the project, on par with its social objectives, represent an innovative approach to traditional local building practices, presented as the natural formal expression of the changes and new approaches promoted by AIDOS. The project privileges an integrated approach to interaction between built space and climatic-environmental issues, based on considerations of sustainability and appropriateness.
The design is based on the separation of the primary activities performed by the CBF into two distinct, though closely related, buildings: a Training Centre, dedicated to management and awareness-rising activities, and a Consultancy Centre, where medical visits, legal assistance and psychological counselling are provided to the community almost free of charge. The volumes that contain the different rooms are independent from the umbrella roof structure, placed atop the platform and freely articulated around a series of shaded and ventilated patios that ensure privacy from the exterior. The modular configuration of the structure allows future expansion while preserving the general framework of the building.The building walls are constructed using BTC [briques en terrecomprimee], clay bricks made on site using a rough mixture of earth, sand and water stabilised with cement and compressed with an hydraulic press. The making of these sun-baked bricks consumed no additional energy [transportation and/or cooking], limiting the environmental impact of the entire intervention.
