Hybrid Architectures:
Reimagining the traditional Senegalese compound
This design project looks at themes of hybrid identity within Senegal’s various religious settings. This is done by paying particular focus on the marabouts, described to be mystical Islamic leaders, and on an annual pilgrimage held in the city of Porokhane in honour of Mame Diarra Bousso, a Mouride saint.
The role of an ethnographer was adopted for this project to fully encompass the social, cultural and religious aspects of the persons and architectures being documented. This role allows for rigorous tracing and documentation of paths of movement during the pilgrimage, transformations of domestic spaces during several types of occupancy, as well as speculations as to how these spaces are occupied during dense lodging periods.
These prompts lead to an architectural proposition that speculates a hybridised form of the Senegalese Wolof compound, where rituals of marabout consultation, domestic living, Islamic prayer and pilgrimage lodging all take place. These speculations are based on how these different take place in a singular space, with parameters being set by special arrangements and how the body interacts with existing fixed and changeable architectures and furniture pieces. The aim of these hybridisations is to speculate spaces where all of these rituals are able to happen in a single typology without the need for further transformations.
