Profile: Yodakandyia Community Centre, Hambantota District

Each day for the next couple of weeks, we will profile one project that has been nominated for the 2010 Aga Khan Awards for Architecture.

Today's project is Yodakandyia Community Centre in Hambantota District:

The Centre is a three-building complex at the heart of the Yodakandyia housing reconstruction scheme, in a new village outside the town of Tissamaharama in south-eastern Sri Lanka that was developed for 218 families affected by the 2004 tsunami. In addition to the community centre, there is a pre-school, library, medical centre, and a cricket pitch and volleyball court. The Centre was designed by Architecture for Humanity, a volunteer, non-profit design and construction services organisation, in close collaboration with the community and with technical assistance from UN-Habitat. The programme engaged the beneficiaries directly: the residents not only acted as client, they also prepared a design brief, implemented the construction and continue to operate the facilities. The available budget and the hot climate drove low-cost construction techniques, with the extensive use of local materials and passive cooling measures. Bricks were hand-made using natural clay earth, fired in open-air furnaces of burning left-over rice husks, and a number of redundant buildings on site were recycled into rubble for the foundations. To address the problem of a lack of access to drinking water—one of the main challenges facing the community—the project also includes a rainwater harvesting system with two large underground tanks that store sufficient rainwater to provide for basic needs throughout the dry season.

Click here for more information on the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture.

Aga Khan Award for Architecture / Eresh Weerasuriya

Aga Khan Award for Architecture / Eresh Weerasuriya

Aga Khan Award for Architecture / Eresh Weerasuriya

2010 Aga Khan Architecture Award Nominees Announced

This year's nominees for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture have been announced.  The nominees include a broad range of buildings, mostly in the third world.  Interestingly, this isn't one of those naval-gazing exercises that the architecture and engineering community so often engages in.  Instead, it rewards architects along with cities, construction firms, and other organizations responsible for turning great ideas into great buildings.

The winner will be announced in Doha in October, 2010.

Over the next couple of weeks, we'll profile one nominee each day here along with pictures of the project.

Click here for more information on the Aga Khan architecture award.

The full press release follows: