Ganvie Light Tower

Ganvie Light Tower is an infrastructure system that converts organic waste into gas and light, creating a self-sustaining biogas network for the community of Ganvie. As a community-based initiative, it incentivizes residents to bring their waste to the collection point by offering biogas in exchange. The project provides biogas, toilets, and a light tower as resources, drawing people to the platform, which serves as the central hub of community activity.

The project goes beyond the scale of architecture to propose a neighborhood scale infrastructure that is applicable to more than one location throughout Ganvie. It establishes a network that reconnects Ganvie to existing infrastructure on land.

Ganvie, also known as the “Venice of Africa,” is a village of 20,000 people that stands on stilts in the middle of Lake Nokoué. Today, Ganvie faces the environmental challenges of lake contamination and eutrophication due to organic matter.

To address these challenges, biogas credit system is suggested. This organic waste-to-gas infrastructure becomes a place to stop on everyday route. People bring Acadia(fishing fence) waste, waste from the fish market, and use the toilet. People on boat can just drop the organic waste and pickup their biogas and then leave, or park their boat to use the toilet and gather on the platform. The amount of organic waste they contribute is exchanged into biogas that is created from the organic mess from the septic tank at the center. 

In Benin, there exists infrastructure including waste treatment system, sewage and lighting infrastructure, but not on the lake. there is a disconnection from the existing waste treatment system. On land, waste is first filtered by woman waste collectors recycling useful plastic

objects, and the rest is transported to the landfill. However, in Ganvie, everything goes straight into the water without a treatement system. Instead, we are proposing to utilize this waste before they get disposed of by building a credit system that is run by Ganvie people as part of the infrastructure.

The project animates the people of Ganvie to bring waste to

the collection point by giving them the biogas as an exchange. This reciprocal