Learning from Land: Interweaving Traditions of Making along the Blue Nile

Abstract

In Sudan, practices of agroforestry once created closed-loop cycles of production that harmoniously linked landscape, agriculture, craft, and architecture. However, these practices have largely been wiped out by past colonial powers. The country’s once bountiful natural landscapes plastered over with abrasive industrialised agricultural systems which continue to be expanded; their grim long-term effects disregarded for the momentary relief they provide.

This thesis aims to recover traditions of making to help preserve ecologies threatened by the need for farm expansion – as is the case with a unique stream condition located in the rural town of Wad Hajja. Using the site as a stage for practices of agroforestry, adobe architecture and handcrafts, the project explores how to encourage the community’s economy, education, and ecology through the design of a school of agroforestry and craft. The proposed scheme interweaves the place-based and the industrial to investigate their economic, ecologic, and functional synergetic potential.