Issathies Journal

Ideas and concepts

The sound of happy children playing, the socialization of residents with each other along with a good sense of peace and security, was an attractive concept for the three of us to give a small gift to the people of Senegal by creating Issathies. 

Issathies was a mother in our minds whose every unit was her child and its inhabitants were all a family: Children who make shared memories in this house today to create a better tomorrow for their family and country. This journey in the definition of spatial bodies led us to create a small place in the heart of Issathies. Based on this, various collective common spaces with the characteristics of homogeneity, gathering to create indigenous ceremonies, respecting the elderly, family members, and children, and finally creating pure collective living experiences for the residents were designed. 

The formic model is designed to have the most resilience to climate change with the least amount of energy consumption and also respect for the environment. Using the wind flow in general form and also creating a windbreak (adapted from the native architecture of Iran) in public spaces, along with different openings to create proper ventilation in the environment, using green cover along with natural shades to control the temperature and create environmental comfort and creating formic shells (double shelling) on the roof were architectural solutions to achieve this goal, which in addition to reducing energy consumption by at least 50% can also increase the comfort of residents. Also, by defining a suitable space for installing solar panels and respecting nature, residents' costs will also be reduced. In addition, we considered the treatment and purification separation system do not cause damage to nature during the operation. 

Design process

At the beginning of the design process, the biggest challenge we faced was the limitation of the habitable area to the number of units required for the project. The competition allowed us to build on 50% of the site, ie 8000 meters, and the number of units required for the competition is at least 250 units. The number of units is as follows: 100 units with 2 bedrooms, 75 units with 3 bedrooms and 75 units with 1 bedroom. After examining the different layouts, we came up with a suitable solution to solve this limitation. The type of three-bedroom and two-bedroom units were duplex and collapsed.

(If this combined mass pieces are two meters apart, a terrace will be created for both units.) With this method, we provided the maximum number of units at the minimum occupancy level. (250 housing units were provided) Following the design process, the competition’s site was analyzed. Climatic factors including: wind speed and direction, rainfall, ambient temperature, humidity and solar radiation were also examined and the income of the agricultural people, the handicraft economy and the future prospects of the region were analyzed. Another design challenge was the seasonal rains (30 mm annual average) in this area, which causes waterlogging on the site.

Which is controlled by measures such as vegetation and creating a slope of the floor of this waterway. Our main approach in designing this project has been sustainability and minimizing the energy consumption of the building, so we entered this information and old information of Ties (which we gathered from Climate Consultant software) in the Design Builder software. Also, the software was used to enter the Design Builder to model the stability systems and energy consumption outputs.

After gaining the information about Ties, we realized that one of the problems of this city is garbage disposal, so we tried to separate this garbage with the garbage bins that we have placed for each block so that it can be recycled. A room for final control of these bins is also designed to ensure proper waste separation.

The name Issathies that we chose to name the project is meaningful to us in several ways. First, it is a combination of the words Isaac and Thies. This word is also the old name of the city of Yazd, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to it’s windcatcher, and this Windcatcher has been used in our project.

Summary

Issathies’s design paradigm, while respecting Senegal's social and cultural traditions, is a program of modules that can be developed to be expanded if needed in the future. This modular pattern can also make construction easier and less costly and increase construction speed.