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Neenyo Net - a self-build infrastructure for performance and craft

Part 2 Project 2005
Neil Sansom
Joanna Leigh-Bedford
 University of Sheffield | UK
Situated in the context of Dakar, Senegal and related to the real endeavour of 325 members of the REFDAF women’s organisation to construct their own community on the outskirts of the city, the Neenyo Net project imagines how existing means, skills and local resources can be used to construct a community building in a developmental context.

The project’s emphasis is on the process by which community infrastructure of street theatre and fabric production may build up to develop eventually into the building proposed. The materiality of this building emerges from the womens’ own activities in the field of fabric production and proposed relationships with craftsmen involved in the dismantling of scrap cars.




Neil’s project addresses the symbolic, social and economic value of arts in the Senegalese society. It takes on issues of self-organisation, self-building and sustainability, searching for alternative architectures in developing countries.
It valorises existing economies and local skills through the evolving process of construction and use of a building for performance, arts and crafts in the Cité des Femmes, a women run project in Dakar. Its flexible structure reinterprets the idea of patterning in the African textiles using recycled car components. Beside its important ethical and economic concerns, Neil’s project captures the taste for hybridisation in the contemporary African culture.

Tutor(s)
2005
The Neenyo Net project focuses on Dakar in Sanegal and the endeavour of a group of local women who are members of the REFDAF organisation. Activities of craft and performance that the women are involved in form a focus to the project.
THE PRESENT SITUATION- What is the value of craft and performance as a commodity in contemporary Senegal?
What is the symbolic value of craft and performance in contemporary Senegal?
What is the social value of craft and performance in contemporary Senegal?
THE PRESENT SITUATION- How are the women of REFDAF involved in activities of craft and performance?
THE FUTURE?- Modelling a context for the cite des femmes, where 325 women of the REFDAF organisation hope to build a new community on the outskirts of Dakar.
A STRATEGY- the project strategy hypothesises how the different economic, symbolic and social values of performance and craft can be related to REFDAF and the Cite des Femmes project and how a shared infrastructure could support these activities.
The developed scenario for the project explores how the strategies might evolve and infrastructure may be built up to develop a social and economic context to the project involving real groups of people.
Different groups of women engaged in craft and performance forge links with eachother, building up an expanding inventory of infrastructure enabling them to use their activities to spread social and political awareness as well as a way of making money.
The construction of the infrastructure emerges from a relationship developed with artisans employed in the dismantling and reuse of scrap cars. Simple mobile infrastructure is followed by the development of fixed infrastructure on the site of the Cite des
The masterplan developed for phase 1 of the cite des femmes seeks to develop a hypothesised urban context for the fixed infrastructure of the project and propose a layout based on principles of climatic design, movement and site geometries.
In its finally developed form fixed infrasructure forms a complex which includes a performance/hirevenue and fabric production atelier. The ground floor plan shows the walls made from disused Dakar taxis which form the main structure.
Other parts of the building are constructed from bamboo as well as car doors and body panels. Fabric produced by the women is used throughout. A section through the building gives some impression of the aesthetic resulting.
An aerial perspective from the South shows the roof which functions to draw hot air out from the walls and funnel cool sea breezes into the spaces of the building.
A perspective from the East shows ventilating walls made from car doors and the flexible framework which can be used for performance, fabric selling and fabric drying.
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