Year: 2016/2018
Where: Bandoulou, Kaolack, Senegal.
Team: Federico Caserta, Francesco Casini, Fiamma Ficcadenti, Valeria Guerrisi
What: New Nursery
Client: Energia per i Diritti Umani
Bandoulou is located in the Kaolack region, about 200 km south of Dakar, not far from the border with the Gambia. In 2006, Energia per i Diritti Umani onlus implemented a kindergarten in the village to improve the school attendance rate of children from the early years of life and to overcome the poor diffusion of the public nursery. The old nursery building has become too small to contain all the children who would like to participate. The project “École Luisa Lorena Caputo: a new school for Bandoulou”, promoted Energia per i Diritti Umani onlus with our support as architects, wants to start from the existing structure to create a safe environment where children can learn playing and having fun in a functional, colorful and safe space.
The structure provides: 3 bathrooms covered for 50 children each (63 square meters per class), 3 classrooms discovered for 50 children each (54 sqm per classroom = 162 sqm), toilet facilities (3 boys and 3 girls), space for outdoor and indoor play, space for the creation of a sustainable vegetable garden, in the frame of the project “Energy from Earth”, which envisages the cultivation of fruit and vegetables for the sustenance of children.
The project is the result of a careful study in order to obtain: easy of implementation by local workers, use of local materials, respect for economic criteria, extensibility without distortion, in case of future need and reproducibility in other geographical and social contexts. The project has already received support from the municipality of Massa Lubrense (NA), including the “Istituto Comprensivo Bozzaotra” of Massa Lubrense and the citizens of Nerano and Sorrento: the school will take the name of the little Luisa Lorena Caputo, a young child from Massa Lubrense dead 12 years of age because a fulminating form of Leukemia.
