Jury Citation

This project has received an Award for its elegant architectonic clarity, achieved with the most humble of means and materials, and for its transformative value. Located in a remote settlement of Burkina Faso, the school is the result of a vision that was first articulated by the architect and then embraced by his community. The first person from his village with access to higher education, while studying architecture in Berlin he became determined to design and build the school. Securing funding for materials from supporters in Germany, he mobilized the men, women and children of the village to erect the building. The result is a structure of grace, warmth and sophistication, in sympathy with the local climate and culture. The practical and the poetic are fused. The primary school in Gando inspires pride and instils hope in its community, laying the foundations for the advancement of a people.

Project data
Client The community of Gando Village, Burkina Faso.
Sponsor Schulbausteine f¸r Gando e.V. – Bricks for a School in
Gando Association, Germany.
Architect DiÈbÈdo Francis KÈrÈ, Burkina Faso.
Site Coordination WÈnÈyda KÈrÈ, Burkina Faso.
Craftsmen Sanfo Saidou (‘Baba’) and Oussmane MonÈ, master
masons; Minoungou Saidou, welder. (All from Burkina Faso.)
Consultant Issa MonÈ, technical officer, LOCOMAT, Burkina Faso, training in brick production.
Commission 1998
Design 1999–2000
Construction October 2000–July 2001
Occupation October 2001
Site Area 30,000 m2
Built area 526 m2
Cost CFA Francs 22,750,000 (US$ 29,830)

Sandbag Shelter Prototypes, Various locations
Architect: Cal-Earth Institute, Nader Khalili, US
Timetable: First development, 1992

Description
The global need for housing includes millions refugees and displaced persons – victims of natural disasters and wars. Iranian architect Nader Khalili believes that this need can be addressed only by using the potential of earth construction. After extensive research into vernacular earth building methods in Iran, followed by detailed prototyping, he has developed the sandbag or ‘superadobe’ system. The basic construction technique involves filling sandbags with earth and laying them in courses in a circular plan. The circular courses are corbelled near the top to form a dome. Barbed wire is laid between courses to prevent the sandbags from shifting and to provide earthquake resistance. Hence the materials of war – sandbags and barbed wire – are used for peaceful ends, integrating traditional earth architecture with contemporary global safety requirements.
The system employs the timeless forms of arches, domes and vaults to create single and double-curvature shell structures that are both strong and aesthetically pleasing. While these load-bearing or compression forms refer to the ancient mudbrick architecture of the Middle East, the use of barbed wire as a tensile element alludes to the portable tensile structures of nomadic cultures. The result is an extremely safe structure. The addition of barbed wire to the compression structures creates earthquake resistance; the aerodynamic form resists hurricanes; the use of sandbags aids flood resistance; and the earth itself provides insulation and fireproofing.
Several design prototypes of domes and vaults were built and tested. The system is particularly suitable for providing temporary shelter because it is cheap and allows buildings to be quickly erected by hand by the occupants themselves with a minimum of training. The shelters focus on the economic empowerment of people by participation in the creation of their own homes and communities. Each shelter comprises one major domed space with some ancillary spaces for cooking and sanitary services. Incremental additions such as ovens and animal shelters can also be made to provide a more permanent status and the technology can also be used for both buildings and infrastructure such as roads, kerbs, retaining walls and landscaping elements. Because the structures use local resources – on-site earth and human hands – they are entirely sustainable. Men and women, old and young, can build since the maximum weight lifted is an earth-filled can to pour into the bags. Barbed wire and sandbags are supplied locally, and the stabilizer is also usually locally sourced.
Since 1982, Nader Khalili has developed and tested the Superadobe prototype in California. In 1991 he founded the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), a non-profit research and educational organization that covers everything from construction on the moon and on Mars to housing design and development for the world’s homeless for the United Nations. Cal-Earth has focused on researching, developing and teaching the technologies of Superadobe. The prototypes have not only received California building permits but have also met the requirements of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for emergency housing. Both the UNHCR and the United Nations Development Programme have chosen to apply the system, which they used in 1995 to provide temporary shelters for a flood of refugees coming into Iran from Iraq.

Khalili’s educational philosophy has also continued to develop. A distance-teaching programme is being tested for the live broadcast of hands-on instruction directly from Cal-Earth. Many individuals have been trained at Cal-Earth to build with these techniques and are carrying this knowledge to those in need in many countries of the world, from Mongolia to Mexico, India to the United States, and Iran, Brazil, Siberia, Chile and South Africa.

Jury Citation
These shelters serve as a prototype for temporary housing using extremely inexpensive means to provide safe homes that can be built quickly and have the high insulation values necessary in arid climates. Their curved form was devised in response to seismic conditions, ingeniously using sand or earth as raw materials, since their flexibility allows the construction of single- and double-curvature compression shells that can withstand lateral seismic forces.
The prototype is a symbiosis of tradition and technology. It employs vernacular forms, integrating load-bearing and tensile structures, but provides a remarkable degree of strength and durability for this type of construction, which is traditionally weak and fragile, through a composite system of sandbags and barbed wire. Created by packing local earth into bags, which are then stacked vertically, the structures are not external systems applied to a territory, but instead grow out of their context, recycling available resources for the provision of housing. The sustainability of this approach is further strengthened because the construction of the sandbag shelters does not require external intervention but can be built by the occupants themselves with minimal training. The system is also highly flexible: the scale of structures and arrangement of clusters can be varied and applied to different ecosystems to produce settlements that are suitable for different numbers of individuals or groups with differing social needs. Due to their strength, the shelters can also be made into permanent housing, transforming the outcome of natural disasters into new opportunities.

Project Data
Architect Cal-Earth Institute, US: Nader Khalili, concept and design;
Iliona Outram, Project Manager.
Consultants P. J. Vittore Ltd, US, and C. W. Howe Associates, US,
structural engineers.
Sponsors and clients National Endowment for the Arts, US; Southern California
Institute of Architecture (Sci Arc), US; the Ted Turner
Foundation, US; United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), US and Switzerland; United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Iran offices; the
Bureau for Alien and Foreign Immigrant Affairs (BAFIA),
Iran; Laura Huxley’s Our Ultimate Investment Foundation,
US; the Rex Foundation, US; Kit Tremaine, US; the
Leventis Foundation, Cyprus; the Flora Family Foundation, US.
Prototypes built to date by Hamid Irani and Iraqi refugees at Baninajar Camp, Iran;
Eric Hansen, Mexico; Djalal and Shahla Sherafat, Canada;
Michelle Queyroy and orphans at the MEG Foundation,
India; Dada Krpasundarananda, India, Thailand and Siberia;
Mara Cranic, Baja, Mexico; Virginia Sanchis, Brasil;
Patricio Calderon, Chile; Jim Guerra and Mexican
farmworkers, US; Don Graber, Craig Cranic, Giovanni
Panza and Yacqui People of Sarmiento, Mexico.
Timetable Sandbag Shelter Prototypes (Superadobe): first development, 1992.

Restoration of Al-Abbas Mosque
Near Asnaf, Yemen
Client: General Organization for Antiquities, Manuscripts and Museums and the French Centre for Yemeni Studies, Yemen
Conservators: MarylËne Barret, France, with assistance from Abdullah al-Hadrami, Yemen
Completion: May 1996

Description
Al-Abbas Mosque is a testimony to the living traditions and architectural achievements of one of the world’s earliest civilizations. Built over 800 years ago, the mosque is situated on the remains of a pre-Islamic shrine or temple on a site considered sacred since ancient times. Its cubic form also has ancient precedents, including the Kaaba in Mecca. The local population continues to revere the mosque and the site today still holds special significance for them.
Set in the highlands of Yemen, 40 kilometres from Sana’a, Al-Abbas Mosque dates from the last days of the Sulayhid Dynasty. An inscription in the interior dates the building to Dhu al-Hijjah 519 (December 1125–January 1126 in the Gregorian calendar) and names the founder as Sultan Musa bin Muhammed al-Fitti. Another inscription names the builder or architect as Muhammed ibn Abul-Fath ibn Arhab. But the mosque is in fact named after a little-known figure called ‘Abbas’, a holy man who is believed to be buried there.
The lower parts of the mosque’s walls are made of stone, with mud bricks at the upper levels. Almost square in plan, the mosque has a flat roof, making it cubic in shape. Inside are six columns, four in stone dating from pre-Islamic times and two in brick. Three of the columns have antique capitals. The columns divide the interior into four rows, leading towards the mihrab wall.
The mosque’s elaborate coffered ceiling is in complete contrast to the building’s modest exterior. Most of it has survived intact since its construction. The ceiling’s twenty-two caissons are covered with intricate decoration carved, gilded and painted in tempera on a wooden support. By the 1980s, the ceiling was suffering from rot and warping. In 1985, the Yemeni Government asked the French Centre for Yemeni Studies in Sana’a to help preserve it. The ceiling was dismantled with funding from UNESCO and removed to the National Museum at Sana’a. In 1987 the French Centre asked archaeologist and conservator MarylËne Barret to carry out the restoration of the ceiling, which took three years. The cleaning and restoration was a slow, painstaking process, and the importance of preserving the history of the ceiling was respected. Major repairs were also required on the roof, and the decision was taken to restore the fabric of the building itself. MarylËne Barret undertook this work with Yemeni architect Abdullah al-Hadrami, together with a team of French and Yemeni archaeologists and the best local craftsmen, who completed the restoration project in 1996. Traditional materials and techniques – many still in use today, such as qudad, a traditional mortar composed of lime and volcanic aggregate that is polished with a smooth stone and daubed with animal fat – were employed wherever possible. No speculative elements were inserted: all new elements can be traced back to original examples in both their form and their location. After the completion of the roof, one thousand separate pieces of ceiling were carefully assembled like a puzzle and numbered in the museum. They were then transported to the mosque, one row at a time, and fixed to an ingenious new supporting structure of Ushaped box beams that is entirely hidden now that the restored panels are in place.
Since the restoration, the building’s original elegance and decoration have come alive, increasing the interest of the local residents, who are proud of their mosque and are especially happy to see the beautiful ceiling back in place. The restoration principles employed in Al-Abbas Mosque may well serve as a guide for further projects concerned with the preservation of cultural property, and the project may stimulate further research, particularly in relation to a number of ruins surrounding the mosque site.

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