Inspiring youth village for orphans generates solar power for nearly 10% of Rwanda

More than one million people in a population of over 11 million in Rwanda are orphans. After hearing about this crisis, couple Anne Heyman and Seth Merrin started the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village (ASYV) to offer a safe community and four-year high school education for at-risk orphans. Today, over 500 teenagers from across Rwanda’s 30 districts call the youth village home — and an on-site solar plant provides clean energy to other parts of the country.

After hearing about Rwanda’s orphan crisis, Heyman was reminded of youth villages Israel constructed to house children orphaned after the Holocaust. The couple began ASYV to help teenagers specifically, as they knew of several organizations already working to care for orphaned babies. On 144 acres, hundreds of teenagers now receive an education and a family.

Related: This modular orphanage in Thailand was built using local and recycled materials

ASYV organizes students into families. Each group has a mama, a Rwandan educator who resides in a house with the teens, and a big brother or big sister or Rwandan guidance counselor who visits once a week. They also have a cousin, a foreign volunteer who comes for a year. ASYV recruits teenagers from around the country, taking in 125 every year.

A village Health and Wellness Center provides medical and mental care, with health education on topics like HIV/AIDS, malaria prevention, and diet. Life Enrichment Applied Programs allow students to get involved in athletics or the arts. A farm, where students can get hands-on farming experience, provides around 30 percent of the village’s food. There’s even a 8.5-megawatt solar plant on village grounds. According to ASYV, “It is the first sub-Saharan grid-connected solar project, and provides electricity to nearly 10 percent of Rwanda.”

Students of mixed ethnicities live together, as the youth village hopes to express reconciliation in Rwanda. One student, who asked to remain nameless, told National Geographic, “Of course, I know that some of my brothers are born from parents who could have been killers in the genocide. But why should we punish them for crimes they did not commit? I don’t want to know what their parents did. I only see them as my brothers and sisters.”

Ten years in, graduates of the youth village have gone on to higher education at universities like Brown University or the University of Pennsylvania. Student Emmanuel Nkund’unkundiye, at ASYV’s first graduation ceremony, said, “Many people call us orphans but this time we are no longer orphans, we have a home.”

Check out ASYV’s website for more information on the community, or on how to get involved.

+ Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village

Via National Geographic

Images via Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village Facebook

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Historic French building stuffed with plastic bags looks ready to explode

A shockingly large number of plastic bags appeared to fill a historic stone building to near bursting in Bordeaux last month. The eye-catching installation is the most recent work of Luzinterruptus, a design collective famous for raising environmental awareness with plastic art installations. Created for the FAB Festival de Bourdeaux, the temporary artwork, titled The Plastic We Live With, turned into a light installation at night evocative of illuminated stained glass.

Inspired by France’s ban of single-use plastic bags passed last year, The Plastic We Live With draws attention to the staggering amount of plastic waste in the world. “The idea was to graphically visualize, in a way that could be understood by all, the plastic excess that is around us, a recurrent subject in our work and in life, since practically everything we consume is either made with this material or it is wrapped in it or we are eating it in small particles in the meat and the fish we ingest,” Luzinterruptus wrote.

Related: PlasticWaste Labyrinth is a stunning look inside our plastic waste problem

The team, aided by 30 volunteers from the Asociacion Bénévoles en Action, collected thousands of plastic bags and recycled plastic for months from the city stores and warehouses. The bags were assembled in the openings of the building’s facade and lit from behind at night. The installation was on view for four days, after which the plastic was taken down and recycled with the building returned to its original condition.

+ Luzinterruptus

Images via Lola Martínez

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Yves Bhar recycles wetsuits and boat sails into ocean-friendly bags

Yves Béhar is turning trash into treasure. The rock-star industrial designer, founder of the San Francisco-based firm Fuse Project, has teamed up with Mafia Bags to transform used wetsuits, recycled boat sails, and castoff climbing ropes from the Yosemite Valley into an “everyday urban adventure pack.” Even better, the proceeds benefit Sustainable Surf, a California nonprofit that leverages surf culture into a force for protecting the world’s oceans.

The project hits close to home for Béhar, an avid surfer and kiteboarder, as well as an ambassador for Sustainable Surf. “I am passionate about protecting the oceans,” Béhar wrote in a blog post. “I surf, swim and explore in them. And I have seen firsthand the damage done. When Sustainable Surf and San Francisco-based sail recycler Mafia Bags approached me, I saw this project as an opportunity to create awareness and finance sustainability programs … and to make a good bag with waste materials.”

Related: Yves Béhar unveils new Smart Locks that make keyless entry a breeze

Designed, sourced, and crafted in San Francisco, the Deep Blue Bag is chock-full of adventure-ready features, water-resistant wet pocket (for wetsuits and sweaty gym clothes), a padded laptop pouch, a hidden side-seam pocket for your wallet and keys, external and internal gear loops, and a place to secure a water bottle. All zippers are designed to be weather-resistant for “fog, rain, sun, shine.”

Besides boasting a generous lifetime warranty from Mafia Bags, no two bags are exactly alike. “One thing that I love about this bag is that because of the way the sails are constructed and re-used, the stitching may happen in different places, which makes every bag a one-of-kind,” Béhar said. Each carryall diverts more than 10 square feet of material from the landfill, according to its Kickstarter campaign, where you can preorder a bag for $175.

Related: “Listen Closely” lampshades are made with legacy sails from Canada Place

All profits from the Deep Blue Bag will go to Sustainable Surf to expand Waste to Waves, a recycling program that reimagines trash as a resource for creating new products. “When you buy this product, you’re not only investing in a functional adventure pack— you’re helping to keep our oceans clean, and supporting a movement that’s making treasure from our trash,” Béhar said.

+ Deep Blue Bag at Kickstarter

+ Fuse Project

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Renewable lifespan Tower of Winds project embraces impermanence

The Tower of Winds reimagines common water reservoirs as renewable structures in constant evolution. Designed as a competition proposal in 2015 by architect Tram-Anh Nyugen, Markus Von Dellinghausen, Midori Hasuike, and Andreas Nordstrom, the project demonstrates how modular elements, local resources and low construction costs can be used to build state-of-the-art sustainable facilities.

The project is part of an interdisciplinary design research platform founded by architect Tram-Anh Nyugen. Called Impermanent Devices, the project focuses on one the three characteristics of existence in Buddhism “Antiya”, the belief that all that exists is transient.

Related: Temporary Story Tower Made With Recycled Materials Offers Free Book Exchange in Latvia

The theoretical foundation of the project rests on the idea that design can be transformed to fit different contexts, scales and functions. Structures should be able to appear, disappear and evolve in order to facilitate continual change and fluidity of space.

The architect’s work has been applied to several research projects, including an urban planning project in Paris on the Périphérique, a major ring road that separates the inner city from the suburbs in Paris. Another recent live project is a commission from the BHD Star Cineplex to design a cinema in the center of Hanoi, Vietnam. This project gives the cinema a new interactive façade that references Vietnamese elements.

+ Impermanent Devices

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Artist turns recyclable cardboard into strikingly lifelike human sculptures

That Amazon delivery box you’ve chucked in the recycling bin might not mean much to you, but in the hands of artist James Lake cardboard takes on almost limitless possibilities. The talented UK sculptor has been working with cardboard for 20 years, manipulating the medium into human sculptures and other objects full of expression and detail. James, who describes cardboard as a “brilliant material to work with,” challenges viewers to see the extraordinary in things often dismissed as mundane.

When James was 17, he developed bone cancer that ended with the amputation of his right leg. Despite, or perhaps because of, these struggles, he developed a passion for the arts that he’s channeled into sculpting cardboard. “When I first started making sculpture I decided to use cardboard as my medium of choice,” says James on his website. “I wanted a medium that can be used to sculpt beyond traditional material and without the need of an arts studio. The end result was the fine crafting of an inexpensive common place and recyclable material. I manipulate cardboard into taking a form which is vastly beyond its original function as a container to transport food and commercial goods.”

Related: Modular Wikkelhouse wrapped in 24 layers of cardboard snaps together in a day

In addition to his personal work and commissions, James’ work has been displayed in schools and as part of community projects. His use of cardboard goes beyond its cost-effective advantages; James believes the use of a ubiquitous material makes his sculptures more accessible “and blur the boundary between high art and low art.” As a self-described “diversity/inclusion artist,” James regularly holds art workshops with disadvantaged members of the community and provides resources to local schools and colleges.

+ James Lake

Via Colossal

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This modular orphanage in Thailand was built using local and recycled materials

This cluster of tiny shelters for Burmese children in Thailand was built using reclaimed wood and locally sourced materials. Following the success of his Casa Techo emergency dwellings in Colombia, Chilean architect Sebastián Contreras Rodriguez developed a modular design that can be adapted to local conditions and material availability.

The Hua-Fai – Youth Center is located in the city of Mae Sot in northwest Thailand close to the Burmese border. As this part of the country is prone to floods, the architect designed raised modules that stand 2.62 feet (80 cm) off the ground with steel profiles anchored to concrete dice.

Related: Iranian Architect Builds Sustainable Bamboo Dome From Bamboo and Dry Rice Plants

Rodriguez collaborated with Estudio Cavernas and a.gor.a architects to build the structures. Each unit can house two kids with a bedroom on the upper floor, and a social area on the lower level.

Recycled wood taken from demolished houses was used to create the main trusses, while eucalyptus logs facilitate natural ventilation. The roofing is made from sugarcane leaves sourced from an adjacent site.

+ Sebastián Contreras Rodriguez

+ Estudio Cavernas

+ a.gor.a architects

Photos by Juan Cuevas, Alejandro Sánchez, Albert Company-Olmo

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Foster + Partners London playground is built of natural and sustainable materials

A new urban oasis for school children in London combines sustainable design with holistic learning. Foster + Partners completed the Ashburnham School Playground in partnership with The Bryan Adams Foundation and playground designers Made From Scratch. The playground brings nature into the city with a variety of natural environments, from the beach sandpit to a bamboo grove, and also integrates rainwater collection.

Providing environments for play is especially important in cities, where concrete tends to dominate the landscape. In place of Ashburnham School Playground’s existing asphalt play areas, Foster + Partners added a mix of hard and soft natural surfaces, emphasizing multi-sensory stimulation through a varied environment with landscaping that is low maintenance but provides seasonal variety throughout the year. The plantings were also selected to counteract air and noise pollution.

Related: Seattle man wants the whole community to enjoy his recycled backyard playground

Among the highlights of the new playground is a handcrafted timber treehouse built into the school’s largest tree, and the main climbing structure, over four meters tall, that takes inspiration from a dense jungle landscape with its tangle of logs, balance beams, rope bridges, nets, and green climbing vines. The refurbished playground also includes a beach sandpit flanked by boulders and untreated timber, custom-built steel and timber troughs that hold collected rainwater, a nest swing nestled in a bamboo grove, a living willow pod, sports pitches and a landscaped amphitheater.

+ Foster + Partners

Images via Aaron Hargreaves / Foster + Partners and Ashburnham Community School

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