CEM Kamanar: A Canopy of Earth and Air, Thionck Essyl, Senegal
CEM Kamanar stands as a testament to the power of community-driven design in the heart of southern Senegal. Born from a profound need for accessible educational spaces, the secondary school seamlessly merges local materiality with innovative climate strategies. It provides an inspiring, thermally comfortable learning environment for five hundred students while deeply respecting and celebrating the existing natural landscape.
The Vision
Foundawtion initiated this project to address critical architectural needs in economically disadvantaged regions, prioritizing both climatic comfort and low-cost construction. By empowering the local community and relying on the region's most abundant resource—clay—the design process became as enriching as the final structure. The existing trees on the site were carefully preserved to give immense value to the project, serving as natural organizing elements that shade playgrounds and gathering plazas for the students as they progress through their school years.
Tectonics
Constructing expansive covered spaces with a compression-heavy material like clay presented a unique structural challenge. The architectural team solved this by engineering catenary vaults from compressed clay blocks that were manufactured directly on site. The campus functions as a highly adaptable grid system composed of individual modules known as Awlas. This intelligent modularity ensures the school can organically expand over time, building new Awlas as the student population grows, centered around a main building housing the library, computer room, and sciences.
The Living Building
This school operates as a breathing entity, perfectly tuned to its climate without relying on mechanical cooling. Each Awla is flanked by wooden lattices that promote continuous cross-ventilation from north to south. Combined with the natural porosity of the clay vaults, this airflow generates a highly effective cooling evaporator effect. A secondary roof of corrugated metal hovers above the clay structures, providing a crucial shaded air chamber while protecting the earth from direct rainfall.
Data sheet
Project Name: Secondary School CEM Kamanar
Location: Thionck Essyl, Ziguinchor, Senegal
Architect: DAW office
Completion Year: 2021
Area: 1,900 m²
Key Materials: Compressed clay blocks, wood, corrugated metal sheet
Typology: Educational / Social Architecture
Client: Foundawtion
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