Kikubo Village Part 2

A few weeks ago I blogged about a village in Uganda that was being built as a shelter for women. In Uganda, if a man divorces his wife, she becomes an outcast. The stigma against these divorced women has them struggling to survive. This village offers them a place to live and learn job skills so that they can become self-sufficient. The village itself is more or less self-sufficient and grow much of its own food.

I have some pictures of the village before the new buildings were added. These were the ones that I was given so that I could put together the rendering I painted for fundraising efforts. Another note--none of these pictures are mine.

Church and classroom:

 

Typical hut:

 

Building the orphanage (with the model farm in the background):

 

The model farm:

 

Another picture of the church and classroom:

 

The classroom and church under construction:

 

 

 

 

 

Mapping Local Culture

Part of being a designer is knowing how to create a sense of place in your design, or at least not mess up the sense of place already there. Part of an area's sense of place is its local culture. Wouldn't it be great if you could find a map showing you the culture of a particular place?

I understand that culture is too complex to be clearly mapped, but you could map certain little pieces of culture.

For example, here is a map of where particular college fanbases are concentrated (and also a big part of how I shape my worldview):

commoncensus.org

This next map may be a little more useful, and shows the spheres of influence of particular cities in the US. In other words, when people in a certain part of the US think about going "to the city," this map shows where they most likely would go:

 

commoncensus.org

But back to the fun maps--this next one maps Major League Baseball fans. I would say Starkville is pretty solid Braves country:

 

commoncensus.org
And here is the map for NFL. It looks a little unclear for Starkville, but my guess is that we lean toward the Saints.

 

 

commoncensus.org

The original maps can be found at the Common Census Map Project's web site. If you're having trouble making out the maps on my blog, the maps on the original web site will let you zoom in on them.

http://www.commoncensus.org/index.php

Biomimetic Urban Design

This might be a stretch...but what if somebody tried to mimic our own natural habitat in urban or community design? I'm not talking about going all the way back to living in caves, but instead I'm thinking of the next step up.

I found this artist's rendering of what such an ancient community might look like. It's the Neolithic village of Jarlshof, on a remote island off the north coast of Scotland.

World Book Encyclopedia

 

Just from looking at this illustration, it appears that an ancient village would be made up of homes clustered around some central space or street. The whole complex would then be surrounded by a wall. I don't know if you could justify such a tower like this one in a modern-day reconstruction, but it would be a nice place to spend time. They probably used this tower for defense or to keep an eye on the livestock.

 

I feel that this village's design can be seen expressed in many of the small subdivisions recently built around central Starkville. The Crabtree property that was our first studio project of the semester definitely had some of the inward-focus of this village. So did that cluster of white houses on Whitfield Street.

 

This is what Jarlshof looks like now:

 

panoramio.com

It seems well-preserved, with only the roofs missing.