Design of Spaces and Places as Learning Tools | Innovation Village, Ntinda

Interior of Innovation Village. Source: Unknown

A common phenomenon with millennials’ is this start-up culture where young people set out to develop an idea as opposed to opting to work in already established firms. The Innovation Village is a hub that provides a space for the founders of the start-ups to sit and work. At the heart of the design, the interior designer, Prosper Byamungu a co-founder of the hub says the hub was developed to get people that work in their rooms, to get out into a real work environment. Working in the hub provides the advantage of close proximity to other professionals, and with the relaxed environment that is in the hub, people will be friendlier. It will be easier to know the person working next to you, and so when you need help, you can easily walk over and get it.

For a start-up, the founder is usually strapped for cash, so he has to perform many roles on his own to get the project on its feet, and as such he ends up working much longer hours. Sometimes this has the risk of the founders focusing so much on creating the product that they forget other aspects of running the business like marketing. The village provides an extra advantage by providing other assistance like financial guidance, it hosts activities to get the various start-ups to meet other people in the industry like their Hackathons for the IT crowd. it also runs accelerator programmes (short span training programmes where the goal is for the start-ups to get trained in their field, exposed to other people in the same field, and experts, and through competitions, and other panel reviews, they get to meet potential investors). With this focused kind of environment, the start-up founders/teams are forced to ‘stay in line’ and see their projects through.

INTERIOR DESIGN

The village provides a very interesting contrast from the street. Located in Ntinda, one almost expects the standard interior office typology in the village which is situated inside a shopping complex, but, on reaching its entrance it becomes apparent that this space is a welcome surprise. It relaxes you just by looking at the elements cleverly chosen to design the space. The interior designer, Prosper Byamungu, took a hybrid of industrial and rustic styles on the project. In this particular project, as is the case with many of his projects, his attention to detail, is astonishing.

The Innovation Village is on 2 floors. The first floor is the open-plan start-up area. At the entrance of this floor, adjacent to the receptionists’ desk is a motorcycle. Every feature from the walls that are painted with vibrant colours with sections with black paint mimicking a blackboard with faux chalk paint drawings and writing in lively colours. Other walls and columns have with tape wall art, and on others typography- most of which, one does not read, to be honest, it is just the excitement of seeing all that going on that is stimulating!

The furniture is cleverly crafted, with tables at varying heights creating a sort of playful atmosphere in the innovation village. Most of the pieces- tables and seats- are made of pallet wood. Some of the tables have their legs made of iron pipework, complete with the angles necessary to form the 90 degree joints. Other table tops have a palette base, but with glass table tops. Other surfaces like the counter of the café, are made with wooden veneers, burnt slightly to give it a unique finish and then varnished. Lighting over the café countertop is with these hard to miss bell pendant lights. The entire space is magical.

The design catered to the need to have the space be as relaxed as possible to form relations between the people using the hub- freelancers, those renting out spaces on a monthly basis alike- with the comfort to work longer hours which is what start-ups need. The social activities organised by the village also go a long way in helping bond the different start-up teams. On the whole, this space comes off as a cool place for friends who are working together.

WORKFLOW

As afore mentioned the first floor is the start-up area. From the entrance, one meets the larger conference rooms. The designer intended it this way, such that people that are just coming to talk business do not have to go all the way round when they do not want to. They could just go straight to the meeting room. But there’s a catch: the various elements cleverly situated adjacent to the conference room are guaranteed to pique the curiosity of the people visiting. So, it provides convenience, but the tease of the other elements like the curious- yet stunning- pieces of furniture and the motorcycle and the playful walls will make you yearn to move around: almost like Abu, Aladin’s monkey, gravitated towards the huge gem in the cave of wonders [ref: the Walt Disney film cartoon, 1994].

After that, the space flows freely, there are open working areas. The spaces here are defined by the furniture: some are large tables where larger groups of 10 can work, others worktops are just enough to seat one, and other seats organised in booths to offer a little bit of privacy. At the other end of this floor, within the view of the open workspaces is the café which causes a distinct café-like scent to waft through the space, which is quite lovely.

The open plan ensures that all the spaces are visually and spatially linked so, all the amenities, like meeting rooms, and the eatery seem conveniently placed: the result, the comfort to work longer. These visual and spatial linkages also provide an added advantage of security through natural surveillance. So, that’s a plus!

The other floor used by the village is dedicated to start-ups that are a bit more established. Currently, the start-ups in this area are Xente, Sellio among others. One arrives into a lobby, and a circulation route surrounding a light well that is lit by a skylight. It washes the space with day light that makes the space feel like a courtyard- a beautiful thing considering that this is happening on the third floor of the building. After walking past this light well, the circulation pours into a space that is to be converted into a lounge at the periphery of which are office spaces. The office spaces here are cordoned in proportions of 4–8 square metres.

CRAFTSMANSHIP

It becomes very clear that what makes this space unique is the craftsmanship of the items in the space. Prosper Byamuntu says, his model for producing such work is to design and build with local labour. When he wants to carry out a specific task, say the unique pipe-legs of the tables, he trains a plumber to fabricate the part that he needs. He works with several fields of people, with a vast skillset, taking their expertise, with a bit of his direction to create the items he needs to create such interiors.

As the team grows, the designer recognises the need to have locally trained designers and craftsmen e.g. painters, sculptors etc. to create such an aesthetic. With his work, he focuses on locally available materials, and skills, as such creating a ripple effect with the financial benefits that construction in a particular area allows. Using local design allows for payments to trickle down even to the shopkeepers that provides refreshments for the local craftsmen and artisans, the suppliers.

The advantage this brings, is it allows for design to tap into a pool of indigenous knowledge and so solutions to designs, over time will be sustainable environmentally, socially and financially.

NEW MODEL FOR EDUCATION?

This thinking of training designers to produce sustainable architecture can be seen in a few cases around Africa.

Koffi and Diabaté Group’s Assinie Mafia Church, Abidjan © Julien Lanoo

In 2015, at the Design Indaba talk by Ivory coast architect Issa Diabaté, of the Koffi and Diabaté Group, an architect developer’s firm voiced the need for an architecture school in Abidjan with a curriculum tailored to our local environment and urban issues, because as he put it “We are moving from the architecture as an object and are becoming more and more interested in the architecture as a way of shaping cities; this is exactly what we need. We don’t exactly need pretty objects but we need to at least make our environment a little bit more formal. I believe that independence, innovation, volunteer work, personal investment are the key ingredients that must characterise the African architect of tomorrow.”

As with Prosper Byamungu, who uses everyday materials to create beautiful spaces e.g. an old motorcycle as a prop, iron work to create interesting details for pendants for lights, ordinary pipework fabricated cleverly to create table legs, we see examples from all over Africa where the focus on local resources has been stressed and is used beautifully. E.g. Francis Kere’s work adapting local building techniques in Burkina Faso where the entire community participates in building-with the women fetching water, and the children stones, and Kunle Adeyemi’s responsive Makoko floating school typology.

In another example, we see the MASS Design group that uses 78 percent of their materials sourced locally, within 100km, and in effect creating approximately 15,756 jobs with buildings that have a reduced carbon footprint.

Butaro Hospital, Rwanda by MASS Design Group © Iwan Baan

The MASS Design group, with every project that is done aims for maximum impact through the 4Es: Economy( by using local materials and labour), environment ( with sustainable techniques used thereby reducing the carbon footprint), education (by using every project as an opportunity to educate the locals in the area, such that with the skills they learn, they can carry on the improved construction methods to other projects) and emotion( for they believe buildings to which users have an emotional experience are better taken care of by those users), and so they say, when one goes to do a project in a new location, “Instead of importing materials, import and idea: and have the locals fabricate it.”

C. Matua, May 2018