The Platform of the Harvest Stars

Sanjani Bentengo

Simplicity resonates through the design in its connection to environment, material selection, spatial planning but most importantly to the people. It emphasizes their social customs, echoes their beliefs and preserves their cultural heritage.

We set to ourselves these goals as a priority during the development of our concept for a cultural center in Sedhiou.

Designed as an Icon for the village, the building refrains from being a monument, it is all about place making, a platform for cultural interchange and memories.

Easily accessible, the new cultural centre promotes social interaction, education, sharing, caring and dreaming. it is at the same time a refuge and the villagers cultural catalyst where stories, beliefs and customs get passed on to the next generation.

Our proposal defines itself as a threshold between the mundane social life and the transcendental place of memories and magic stories, rituals and beliefs, the spiritual dimension of the villagers in Sedhiou.

This duality is clearly defined in our concept by the play of two (almost) separate platforms:

1- One fully covered by a roof and easily accessible, as it is completely open and can only be closed by movable millet stalks mats which can give the place a complete flexibility turning it into a refuge, a social gathering space,  a classroom or an exhibition area. This socially permeable space is designed as the village Bantaba (meeting platform in the centre of the village) leaving the passage free for the villagers between the main road and the sparse forest enclosure and neighborhood in the back.

2- The second platform where get performed the villagers memories lies behind two thick walls preserved from the daily life, it is a place of transcendence, a non temporal space. The embracing movement of the walls preserve also the only remaining tree inside our plot (behind every founding story of a village in Casamance and Pakao resides a tree of particular characteristics). This tree will mark the future stage location of our performing art platform.

This platform is however open to sky connecting the dreamers of Sedhiou to the stars (The platform of the harvest stars or Sanjani Bentengo is a constellation used by the people around the the casamance river to know exactly when the harvest is near, it has a bamboo platform shape as per their beliefs), the constellations, the seasons and their memories.

The cultural center wants to be an interplay architecture of enclosure, of compression and release of vastness and details but also of simplicity in the approach, the details and in the process.

Two curved lines (walls), a roof with its structure (civic), two elevated platforms, a water collecting pond/tank, the sky and the people of Sedhiou are the only elements that define our project.

The walls stand straight from the outside but elegantly enlarge their base for the people to sit on the other. Narrow long openings interrupt the smooth curves to visually connect both platforms, it also reminds us that no so long ago inhabitants of Casamance villages used to build high boundary walls and palissades to protect themselves from the mutual raids and conflicts.

The larger openings are the only physical connections between the outdoor performing art platform and the shaded structure.

Between the two platforms a rain collecting pond connected to a tank in the basement is proposed to receive the water drained from the roof, but it reminds us also that we are near the Casamance river to which is related the inhabitants mundane and spiritual life.

At the north-western end of the shaded platform an elevated wooden pathway through the neighboring trees connects again both platforms , this could be used as artists access and exit during big events .