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bell tower and dome, lepera, ethiopia
In 2010 Austin Hawkins completed two contrasting projects in Burkina Faso. These works benefitted from his recent experience building the Robi Community Centre. For these projects, Hawkins strove to listen carefully to the needs of the local people and also to be transparent about both the experimental nature of the project, and how the work would bring revenue to the communities in which he worked.
While Hawkins contemplated the project he would embark on in Burkina, he translated technical manuals for the French NGO, Association de la Voute Nubienne (AVN), and gained a deeply respect for their teach-a-man-to-fish approach to aid intervention. AVN teaches masons to build a standard earth brick vault, a method of building high-quality buildings of locally sourced material. By requiring each mason trained to take two apprentices, they seek to propagate their impact with less and less involvement by the foreign organization. The AVN construction method will survive and evolve only if it truly serves the Burkinabes.
When AVN president Thomas Grenier suggested AVN would be served by realizing their first third-storey vault, Austin took on the traditional role of an architect by providing a design for the tower’s third storey, ordering material and overseeing construction. The all-earth tower was to eventually house a bell.
Studies of AVNs techniques got Austin considering alternate possibilities. While riding his bike through the bush, he came across the village of Lapera, apparently of Muslim faith and set in a beautiful savannah next to a reservoir. Austin proposed to build a prototype dome, a variation on AVN techniques. Mien Nemedon, chief of Lapera, agreed, given all workers would be paid a fair salary, and that Austin would provide plenty of rice to eat. The dome was just a wild idea - a sculptural piece - and all involved would work together to discover its potential.
The idea was to derive a catenary dome using a bicycle fork welded to a tripod of rebar, two loci welded to the fork, and a loop of string. This device traced an ellipsoid, enabling raw earth bricks to be set regularly, and close enough to a catenary form that they could be thin yet entirely in compression and thus very strong. The dome included 6 entrance portals, symbolizing the 6 major religions of the world, the spiraling dome of bricks above symbolizing their interconnection as the people of the world rise to illumination.
This project was completed on time and on budget - smiles all around.
designed by austin hawkins
built by the people of Lepera, association de la voute nubienne and austin hawkins
completed in 2010
photographed by austin hawkins