Kaira Looro: Women's House

The main theme of the Women's House revolves around the idea of one united, compact space that creates a sense of community and togetherness: a safe space where associations and members of society can meet and discuss equality and human rights, with the involvement and emancipation of the local women. The overall theme is read through Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own": a woman, in the form of the Women's House, gets a space of her own in the real world, one that is truly hers, and not a bedroom or a kitchen, the spaces we traditionally learned to call "women's rooms", which ultimately implied their roles in society.

The concept grew out of research into the Bantaba, a place where community, affirmation and a sense of purpose begin: a spiritual circle around which the community revolves. In that sense, the circular space of the project, adaptable, multifunctional and half covered, is the main meeting point for the women of the village. During the rainy season the centre of that circle becomes a pool, a natural mirror, a metaphorical one that gives women a sense of being seen, understood and valued by their surroundings.

Two large rammed-earth volumes on either side of the central space, all wrapped in a skin of wild bamboo, hold the administration on one side and a space for meetings on the other. The bamboo skin keeps the space compact and acts as an environmental mediator, screening the inner walls from direct sun and rain while letting fresh air and breeze pass through. It also creates many passages and openings that can be used freely. One of them is meant for a technological device, a laptop, a tablet or a computer, to make information more accessible, create a wider connection, and make the opportunities that exist better known and easier to reach for the women of the village.

The materials of the house are found on site, promoting sustainability and the full use of local resources. A large part of the house is built of tyres found thrown in the rivers: building with them costs nothing and also answers the area's big problem of pollution. The tyre walls are filled with sand, and red clay is used as a final coat to make the walls smoother and the space more pleasant. The inner tyre volume is wrapped in the wild bamboo envelope, which screens it from direct sun and rain and gives ambient spaces, passages and a circular walk. The roof structure is made of rosewood beams and the roof cover of aluminium sheet, chosen as the most suitable materials in the long term. The dividing walls of the administration and the toilets are built of clay bricks, which also frame the windows and doors in the tyre walls. The base of the house is laterite earth, and in the central part broken tiles are laid in to mark the space.

Low-tech construction systems are used, so the house can be built by workers and the villagers themselves, with the materials and skills at hand. Construction starts with the base, 40 x 9.5 m. The space under the roof covers 128 m², set out symmetrically to the left and right of the main circular, interactive space. Once the tyres are collected locally or regionally, they form the walls, laid like bricks and filled with sand for stability.

The clay base is dug out 90 cm to make an amphitheatre, closed on one side by the circular tyre wall. Wooden beams, columns and wild bamboo cover the amphitheatre, forming a ring-shaped lid above it; bamboo suits the circular lid because it is flexible. The same system of beams, columns and bamboo runs around the left and right parts of the structure, for shade and to make the passages: bamboo 5 m long is laid horizontally between the vertical wooden columns (5 x 8 cm). The roof over the administration, the toilets and the classroom is built of rosewood beams, a narrowing roof structure with light from the side, covered with aluminium sheets.