Our goal in this project was to create a building which would result out of local construction techniques and materials, resulting in a familiar, yet iconic image for the artists who would call this home. As such, the building is a wood beam and truss construction with load bearing brick walls, and metal decking for roofing, with brick paving. Aside from materiality, it was key to take into account the thermodynamic performance of the building, aware of the often-punishing sun that characterizes a place like Benga, Malawi, creating a building that constantly breathes.

The building coexists in harmony with expansive landscape while still sustaining a strong presence of its own. In this way, clear silhouettes and simple materials become the fundamental design components. Through different local grasses, native wildflowers, rocks and brick paving, we demark and delineate the different programmatic components of the brief, allowing them to coexist through minimal gestures, an architecture of landscape. At the master-planning scale, the cross helps us define and create quadrants of distinct programmatic characteristics. The building becomes a device by which we can begin to give order to the site and elegantly calibrate the future stages of possible expansion. In the same way, the cross mediates between latent interaction and offers privacy to the different living and artistic production facilities.

The relationship to the building’s scale was also a key aspect for us. We have created a pronounced porch which surrounds the entire perimeter of the building, ideal for gathering under the shadow. The heavy scale of the brick is pacified through moments which pay great attention to proportion and the human body, using for instance a bench which continuously attaches to the exterior brick walls creating an ideal moment for pause and conversation.