A fascination with the craftsmanship and low-maintenance durability of Ethiopia’s ancient ruins inspired the client-architects’ hands-on initiative to employ their techniques in creating this environmental museum. Reclaiming a former rubbish dump and integrating young people in both construction and daily operations, it challenges socially and environmentally destructive urbanisation dynamics. The complex contains galleries, library, restaurant, cafés, gift shop, dairy farm, productive and ornamental permaculture gardens, and an elementary school with music room, circus training centre, clinic, playground, educational gardens, and amphitheatre. Its single-storey structures are mostly wattle-and-daub – indigenous juniper-wood poles and woven eucalyptus screens plastered with a fermented mixture of red soil, straw, and water - on drystone foundations. Exterior walls are artistically hand-moulded and sculpted. Interior walls are covered with plywood as a background for exhibitions, or mud-and-straw plastered and painted with a primer made from cattle bones. Doors and window frames are Wanza wood; floors are recycled wood pallets. 

Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture