Asase Yaa Village (UH-SA-SHAY YAH)

Fall 2022 My colleagues Jaisha Victorian, Giovanni Montrel, and I designed this in our Fall 2022 option studio with the intent to submit to the Earth Made Building Competition on UNI, an online platform that hosts real world design competitions. Asase Yaa Village is a conceptual earth brick housing complex design for a site in Bolgatanga, Ghana. Our goal was to reintroduce the vernacular architecture of the region while also exploring the capabilities of earth brick design and creating spaces for cultural traditions. In our research we discovered that this region of Africa, specifically poorer neighborhoods, frequently experiences blackouts. Because of this we designed the complex without electricity. The style of our earth brick allows for various wall assembly types to control how pervious each wall can be.