African Design Magazine September 2016 | Page 22

African project Korando Educational Center – Kenya W hen we started this project back in January 2015, the plan was to raise funds to build a permanent school for the centre (we haven’t reached that goal yet). But quickly we realized that building a school costs a lot of money. I mean really a lot. We are talking about $15-20K per classroom. It’s crazy. So we changed our approach. We knew that we couldn’t do it alone and that we needed help. And the best way to get help I thought was to bring people to Kenya to see and connect with the centre themselves. That’s how the idea of a volunteer program developed. Next we needed accommodation for the volunteers and Mama was thinking to build a guesthouse anyways. Then I came across the domes in Thailand on Facebook. I saw the way they were built and I knew I could do the same. He said $6000 and 6 weeks and I thought that’s perfect. We can totally do that. Because of my experience of building a biogas plant in Livingstone, Zambia, I knew how to build bubble structures but totally underestimated the time it takes to actually build a house. The finishing takes the most time. So the dome home idea was born just a few days after we started the project. I found the design perfect to WATCH Click here to take a tour of the center during construction