The Mashambas Skyscraper is a project designed to improve the lives of small farmers in Swahili, East Africa. It will host education, training on agricultural techniques, cheap fertilizers, and modern tools. The structure will be made of simple modular elements, easy to assemble, deconstruct and transport.

Over the last 30 years, worldwide absolute poverty has fallen sharply (from about 40% to under 20%). But in African countries, the percentage has barely fallen. Still today, over 40% of people living in sub-Saharan Africa live in absolute poverty. More than half of them have something in common: they’re small farmers.

Africa, because of poor infrastructure, limited markets, weak goverments, and fratricidal civil wars that wracked the postcolonial continent, is still struggling to develop its agriculture. The main objective of the project is to bring small farmers an opportunity to produce as much produce per acre as huge modern farms. When farmers improve their harvests, they pull themselves out of poverty. They also start producing surplus food for their neighbors. When farmers prosper, they eradicate poverty and hunger in their communities.

Mashambas also creates a local trading area, which maximizes profits from harvest sales. Agriculture around the building flourishes and the knowledge spreads towards the horizon. The structure is growing as long as the number of participants is rising. When the local community becomes self-sufficient it is transported to other places.

Today hunger and poverty may be only African matter, but the world’s population will likely reach nine billion by 2050, scientists warn that this would result in global food shortage. Africa’s fertile farmland could not only feed its own growing population, it could also feed the whole world.

Architects Pawel Lipiński, Mateusz Frankowski, Poland

Source : www.evolo.us/featured/mashambas-skyscraper/ via Carnet de notes 387.

Architecture Ecology