Shelter as progress

This project was handed in in June 2021 as the Final Project of the Bachelor degree in architecture.

KEYWORDS: Shelter - Ethiopia - Construction - Muke Turi - Development architecture - Construction solutions

The study of the existing constructive solutions in the central Ethiopian area is a field that hasn’t been analysed in depth. However, an improvement of the Ethiopian shelter would bring a big change in terms of health and quality of life. 

In this investigation, the local architectures of a particular case study are examined. It is the case of the Missionary Community of Saint Paul the Apostle (MCSPA) enclave in Muke Turi and its surroundings. With this data, a catalog of construction solutions is created, which will also contain several proposals of improvement solutions.

The characteristics of the general environment and particular context are analyzed to understand the reasons behind these architectures and the possibility of proposing new ones. To do  this, the place is observed from different points of view: cultural, political, climatic, demographic ...

Through a later approach to the developing MCSPA community, it seeks to shed light on the particular construction methods and techniques.

Only by knowing all the inputs to handle, solutions are proposed that can be implemented in a very particular context. These evolutionary strategies are not only based on previous solutions, but can also be exported to case studies with similar characteristics. 

This empirical method allows the possibility of finding proposals that really seek to be a solution for the population of this area. Indeed, field work has been carried out and the solitions are based on very specific data. The main goal of this work is to be a practical and direct solution, which will be developed after this  essay as a personal project.