Yoel Mukalay
Start-up Lions Campus, located on Lake Turkana in Kenya, is an ICT center designed to provide high-level training and international job opportunities to young entrepreneurs. The project, completed in 2021, is built on 1,416m2 and celebrates the unique morphology and natural beauty of the site. The campus is built from locally sourced quarry stone with a plaster finish, incorporating ventilation towers to cool workspaces and create a landmark in the area.
Located in Kenya and home to Lake Turkana, the country’s largest landlocked body of water and the biggest desert lake in the world, Turkana county is well-known to be a large expanse of beautiful yet arid land with low bushes and occasional trees. Termite mounds, buzzing with activity and up to several metres high, are dotted around the region’s gently undulating landscape. These structures built by terminates are what captivated and inspired Francis Kéré, the Berlin-based architect born in Burkina Faso, when I was researching the area of a sustainable education campus on the lake’s banks.
During the Global Africa Forum organised by the Munich Technical University in 2019, Francis Kéré met Ludwig Bayern, founder and CEO of Learning Lions, a non-profit organisation that works to empower young adults in impoverished rural areas of Eastern Africa. The pair then decided to build a higher education facility by Lake Turkana, that would offer valuable IT knowledge to the country’s youth. Start-up Lions Campus is an information and communication technology (ICT) centre, located on the shores of Lake Turkana, Kenya.
The project was designed on an area of 1 416m2. Completed in 2021, the project responds to the urgent challenge of youth in the face of unemployment facing the region, as it offers high-level training and access to international jobs, allowing young entrepreneurs to prosper professionally without having to leave their place of origin. The campus will provide 100 new workstations and is the first step in an ambitious spread of ICT networks in remote areas.
The project celebrates the unique morphology and natural beauty of its site. It is built on two levels, which follow the natural slope and have spacious roof terraces that offer panoramic views over Lake Turkana. The roof terraces are shaded by creeping vegetation, providing a pleasant exterior and gathering spaces where opportunities for informal exchange of ideas are provided.
The campus is built out of locally sourced quarry stone with a plaster finish. In choosing which materials and construction techniques to use, ecological sustainability, cost, and availability factors were weighed to arrive at the best compromise.
Collaboration with the local community was key in this decision-making process, drawing from their experience and expertise. The building is inspired by the towering mounds built by termite colonies in the region. Ventilation towers create a stack effect to naturally cool main workspaces by drawing heat upwards, while cool air is drawn in through specially designed low-level vents. This system allows the campus to withstand high temperatures and is especially suitable, since it avoids dust that can damage the equipment.
In addition to their functional role, the towers create a landmark in the surroundings. The campus is built from locally sourced quarry stone with a plaster finish. Materials were carefully chosen, and construction techniques could be used, and levels of ecological sustainability, cost factors and availability were weighed. Collaboration with the local community was key in this decision-making process.
