Echo Heart: A Woven Bamboo Chapel in Ethiopia That Treats Deforestation as an Economic Problem

Most proposals that set out to fight deforestation start by drawing a protective line around the trees. Echo Heart starts somewhere less obvious: with the household that clears forest because it has no other way to earn a living. The project borrows the image of the human heart, a central organ that keeps resources moving through a body, and applies it to a community. A chapel sits at the centre, and pathways carry people, opportunity and ecological awareness outward to the spaces that sustain daily life.

Designed by Yanting Deng and shortlisted in the Eco-Chapel competition, the proposal is set in the Ethiopian landscape. It treats architecture as a living framework rather than a standalone object. Religious, educational, commercial and communal spaces are woven into one network, and the forest is treated as part of the plan rather than as a backdrop to it.

Walkways That Thread Between Forest Clearings

The first view sets the tone. A timber walkway with bamboo railings leads past a sequence of woven bamboo vaults, and a single robed figure on the deck gives the scale. The deck rests lightly on the ground, and the vaults sit low and rounded. They read less like buildings and more like shelters grown among the trees, which matches the project's intent to embed architecture in the woodland instead of carving it out.

Deng describes the built forms as organic clearings within a forest canopy, linked by paths that extend from the central chapel. The walkway is where that idea becomes physical. Movement between functions happens through the landscape, so every daily trip is also a walk in the forest. The proposal keeps existing vegetation wherever possible, and that restraint is what lets the circulation work as an experience rather than just a connection.

A Garden Courtyard Beneath the Chapel Dome

The chapel interior shows a clear choice. Under a woven bamboo dome, the prayer space opens onto a garden courtyard. A bare-limbed tree rises from the middle, lavender beds frame a stone-paved floor, and candles glow around the edges. Deng does not set nature apart from worship here; it becomes the object of contemplation. The tree takes the place an altar might normally hold.

This choice supports the project's larger argument. The chapel is meant as a gathering place for reflection and coexistence, and it is framed by gardens, vegetation and water elements. By making respect for nature the shared ground of the space, the design opens the room to people across cultural and religious boundaries. A single faith does not have to own it for it to work.

Heart-Shaped Openings Above the Canopy

The view down through the woven roof is the most memorable image in the set. Heart-shaped openings in the bamboo lattice frame a dense canopy of green trees below. The heart metaphor is stated here without any explanation. The roof becomes a lens, and what it frames is the forest the whole scheme exists to protect.

The detail also shows how the project treats voids. Open courtyards, planted gaps and forest pockets are described as essential parts of the spatial experience, and the perforated roof carries that logic into the building envelope. The holes are not ornament. They are where the building gives way to what surrounds it.

A Masterplan Built to Make Clearing the Forest Unnecessary

The coloured axonometric shows the full system. White pavilions with organic outlines cluster around a central dome, scattered among pastel tree canopies. The arrangement follows the circulation diagram the project describes: circular spaces linked by paths that radiate from the chapel and connect every major function on the site.

What those pavilions contain is the strongest part of the proposal. Deng recognises that economic insecurity often pushes communities to clear forest for farming and survival, so the plan places education, vocational training, markets and job centres alongside the chapel. Learning and skills become long-term tools for protecting the forest, and the markets and job centres offer routes to economic resilience. In this plan the chapel matters less as a monument and more as the source that keeps those programmes connected.

Why This Project Matters

Echo Heart is valuable because it takes the causes of deforestation seriously. Many eco-architecture proposals stop at materials and planting. This one admits that forests are lost through economic need, and it answers with programme. The result is closer to a social infrastructure plan with a sacred centre than to a chapel with a green agenda, and that is a more honest response to the brief.

The architecture backs up the argument. Woven bamboo vaults, light timber walkways and roofs that open onto the canopy all reinforce the same message: building and forest belong to one system. For a competition about ecological chapels, Deng's entry makes a convincing case that the most sustainable sanctuary may be the one that gives people a reason to keep the trees standing.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Yanting Deng

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Project credits: Echo Heart by Yanting Deng Eco-Chapel (uni.xyz).