SYFORD

Project 03Cultural pavilion

Sahel Pavilion

Status
Concept design
Program
Cultural pavilion
Location
Bamako, Mali
Area
2,400 m²
Target year
2028

Sahel Pavilionconcept design, axonometric study

The idea

One folded roof over an open floor — a machine for shade that harvests the rare rain and gives the neighbourhood a cool public room.

In the Sahel, shade is infrastructure. The pavilion is drawn as a single folded plane, tilted to throw deep shadow across an open ground floor that stays permeable to every crossing path.

The folds are not a gesture: each valley of the roof is a gutter, collecting the short season of rain into cisterns below the floor. The roof performs before it poses.

Under it, the plan is almost nothing — a stage, a market, a classroom, whatever the day requires. The architecture is the climate it creates.