MUKURU DONATION ROOF PROJECT

In Mukuru, a slum in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, this project saw a roof for children's learning built by hand by local people together with volunteer members from Japan. The project was initiated and managed by Saori Imoto (then at Nihon University), who has long carried out research and practice in this area. The design was led by two architects, Soma Yokoi (Soma Yokoi Architects) and Kenta Kitagawa (Kitaken), working with students from the Imoto Laboratory. CHIASMA FACTORY was not involved in the design; I, Shingo Tsuji, the firm's principal, took part in on-site construction support and direction, and in producing the booklet that documents the project.

The site is a corner of the Happy Promotion Center, a small non-formal school that takes in local children. Since 2015 the Imoto Laboratory has worked with this school, building a classroom block and a caretaker's hut together with local people. In 2021, however, homes across some 19.4 hectares of the area, including the school, were subjected to forced eviction. The school rebuilt its classrooms with materials it had salvaged and reopened within about three months, but roughly half of its site was left as cleared land. In response, Imoto once again took the initiative, launching a project to create an open-sided, pavilion-like space where children could study and practice dance, sheltered from the strong sun of the dry season and the rain of the wet season.

The roof is built from scaffolding pipes and clamps, which are relatively easy to obtain locally, and consists of two types of structure: gabled frames adapted from traditional Japanese roof trusses, and arches. With few details and simple rules, it creates spaces of various sizes, while overall stability is provided by walls of stacked Nairobi stone blocks, a type of tuff quarried locally.

Most of the project's costs were covered by a grant and by crowdfunding in Japan. Donations were solicited for individual components such as roofing, columns, and stones, so that donors could feel their support literally became a "piece" of the project. The more donations came in, the further the roof could extend, and the donors' names are carved into the stones. All building materials were limited to what could be procured within a one-kilometer radius of the site. Starting with the procurement of materials, the structure was raised in just three weeks together with local craftsmen, architecture students, and young people from the community.

What overwhelmed me most on site was the energy of the Kenyan workers, who kept working without a break from morning until late in the evening, and their remarkable physical ability. Children always surrounded the site, and their smiles encouraged me again and again. Partway through construction, a surprise party was held to celebrate the birthdays of two members, a Japanese student and a local support member. Though the community could hardly have had money to spare, a large cake was prepared, dozens of children gathered, and children from the dance school performed for us. Flower petals fluttered down from the newly raised roof. Emotions welled up in me that I never feel in my everyday work. It is a scene I still cannot forget.

At the same time, seen from a wider view of the social context in which the project was set, the very framework of "those who have helping those who do not" can, depending on one's perspective, become an imposition of goodwill, or even an act that sows new seeds of inequality in the community. Why is only this school being helped? We were confronted with this question on site, both openly and implicitly. The team therefore insisted not on handing over money or goods one-sidedly, but on using only local materials, working shoulder to shoulder with local people, and sharing skills and knowledge. The space beneath the roof, too, was not kept for the school alone but opened as a place where people from the community can gather and rest. What does it mean to engage in a way that does not divide people into those who give support and those who receive it? Being made to think deeply about this was one of the greatest lessons for all of us.

Short as it was, the experience was full of stimulation: diving into a place utterly different from home in both environment and ways of thinking, and working with hands and head every day until exhausted to build, from nothing, a place for a community in socially difficult circumstances. To create, with limited resources and with our own hands, a place where people in harsh conditions can survive and move toward the future, thinking as we go and pooling wisdom and strength with our companions: this is the primal impulse of architecture itself. It became a precious opportunity to reconsider why I practice architecture at all.

Since completion, people from the community have been coming to rest beneath the roof, and it has begun to be used for local meetings. The school's teachers have removed some of the roofing, added walls, and repurposed materials for other uses, so the building continues to change. Designed to embrace instability and to allow for expansion, reduction, and reconstruction, the roof is becoming a work of architecture that grows through the interplay between the residents' own hands and engagement from outside.

For the booklet that records the project's history and outcomes, I was responsible for the overall editing, proofreading, and production. My aim was not to single out the design and construction, but to convey in full how the project came about, including the Imoto Laboratory's many years of work, and the whole picture of the process. I also sought a content and structure that would vividly convey the atmosphere on site.