6th workshop: LOWCOST STRATEGIES IN DESIGN AND COMMUNICATION

The workshop is demand-driven project based on identification of needs of the faculty. It is a complement of the course Arch 5422 Low-cost strategies in design for 75students of 5th year in the Program B.Sc. in Architecture.
The aim of the course is to teach and train lowcost strategies in design. Students shall be able to adopt low-cost strategies in their design projects based on international and Ethiopian expert knowledge. Special consideration is given to the field of low cost design in rural areas because School of Architecture and Urban Planning in Mekelle participates in international research programme on rural communities and their development.

AIM: The workshop is an intensive and playful approach to explore the issue of the lowcost design, to explore how architectural tools can be used to shape public interest. The course gives special emphasis to Ethiopian urban/rural context cost minimization, affordability, replicability, material selection, flexibility, effective construction technologies. It is an occasio to support creativity, innovation and the emergence of dynamic low-cost design and sustainable design sectors, to transform the existing potential in a decent and appropriate way, to question the roles of stakeholders and to review its distribution, to evaluate the accessibility and availability of the design, how to activate remoted areas, how to attract the people to care about it, how to think progressively and SUSTAINABLY, how to contribute to the DEVELOPMENT, how to respond to the aspiration of people…

SUB-THEMES: how to use local, primary and secondary materials – how to recycle, how to make the users feel the ownership of the site, architecture as a contribution to the development, material REGENERATION, finding focal points of public attention, phenomena and archetypes, cost minimization, affordability, replicability, material selection, flexibility, effective construction technologies presentation techniques, communication…

progress

2013_06______initial contact about research cooperation
2013_09______arrival to Ethiopia, 3-month long research in situ
2013_10-11______workshop “Think globally, act locally!” in Mekelle University
2014_02______booklet “SCHOOLdesignINNOVATIONS” , (in chapter Fresh Ideas)
2014_05______workshop “Find It and Use It” about public space in condominiums
2014_11______product design workshop “Condominium Street Fu(rni)ture” at the occasion of the International Conference “The Affordable and the Profitable” in Mekelle
2015_01-03______candidature for the grant of the Czech embassy in Addis Abeba to organise workshop build the condo fu(rni)ture – refused
2015_10______workshop “Conservation, Creativity and Communication” – postponed
2016_04______workshop “uJCA_ws_Low Cost Strategies in Design and Communication 2016”