When construction on the first phrase the 29,000-square-foot Village Health Works (VHW) medical campus wraps up this fall, the project will have involved architects, contractors, craftsmen, and one human waste-to-fuel specialist. If one of these things seems unlike the others, it is: Dr. Kartik Chandran, a professor of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University was contracted by New York-based architect and VHW designer Louise Braverman to consult on alternative energy solutions and sustainable blackwater treatment for the 40-acre site. “Kigutu is totally off the grid,” says Braverman, speaking of the lush, hilly central African nation where construction on VHW’s new complex is underway. “As we set out to craft a five-year master plan, our goal was to, simultaneously, create a five-year energy plan for the entire site” that took the center’s isolation and water needs into account, explains Braverman.
Braverman isn’t alone in taking on larger development projects in tandem with individual buildings on the world’s second-largest continent: firms from New York’s SHoP—which has designed a hyper-sustainable, 320,000-square-foot Innovation Hub for the government of Botswana—to Kohn Pedersen Fox—which is developing a 200-acre master plan in Accra, Ghana with Columbia University’s Earth Institute—have found that building in Africa necessitates an approach that considers local ecosystems, accessibility, and public health. These larger issues are fundamental to any project, especially in “so-called ‘resource-poor’ environments,” says Michael Murphy, founding partner of the Boston- and Rwanda-based non-profit firm MASS Design Group.
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