Five years ago AD100 architect Toshiko Mori, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, gave her class an assignment: create a mixed-use building for a remote stretch of eastern Senegal. The project was born in part from conversations she’d had with friend and past collaborator Nicholas Fox Weber, who heads the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting the legacy and ideals of the modernist couple. Mori and Weber shared an interest in the West African region, and what had originated as an academic exercise for her students became reality when he approached her about building a community center and artist residency in the tiny Senegalese village of Sinthian.
Offering her firm’s services pro bono, Mori worked with Jordan MacTavish, a former pupil, whom she had hired as an associate, to adapt the structure he had designed for the class. Among the features they added were masonry based on a Josef Albers fireplace and a thatched roof, inspired by Anni’s textiles, whose sloping surfaces collect rainwater, a precious commodity in the arid climate.
During construction MacTavish made multiple trips to the site, consulting with villagers to erect the building, which was named Thread and unveiled this March with accommodations for two artists plus other spaces for community gatherings. The hope is that the visiting talents will continue to work with locals, emulating in their projects the collaborative spirit that helped this building come to be. thread-senegalrg
* *
