DESIGN AND SPORTS (5) - KENYA / UK/ US/ PITCH-AFRICA: THE ENDANA WATERBANK CAMPUS & FOOTBALL ACADEMY

SOLVING THE WATER NEED WITH SOCCER - How do you translate the complexity of a global problem so that it might appeal to everybody? British architects Jane Harrison and David Turnbull of US-based PITCHAfrica came up with a solution that combines Africa’s greatest passion with its greatest need: a Soccer Field (or pitch) that doubles as an interface and device to collect, store and filter rainwater, making it potable and clean.

Currently almost one billion people on earth don’t have clean drinking water, while there is often plenty of rainwater available. One third of them lives in sub-Saharan Africa, in areas which are particularly prone to flash floods followed by long droughts. The yearly rainfall in this region is higher than in some counties in Northern Europe. But because the rainfall is concentrated in short periods of time, much of the water evaporates and is lost, causing severe shortages of clean water. Women and children have to walk long distances - up to 40 km a day- to get water that is often contaminated with disease that is easily spread. Dirty water and a lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all disease in the region and kill more people than all forms of violence. And the long journeys to get water also keep girls out of schools and render their mothers unable to care for their families or earn an income. 

The Waterbank campus at Endana Secondary School is one oft he public buildings in the Laikipia region of Kenya, which were designed to capture, store and purify rainwater during rainy seasons. The project was designed by PITCHAfrica, a social enterprise and non-profit architecture group headquartered in the United States, and co-founded by the British architects Jane Harrison and David Turnbull of ATOPIAResearch, that set itself the aim to harness the power of architectural ideas to solve pressing world problems. 

As its name implies, PITCHAfrica focuses on the African continent, and seeks to find solutions for the water crisis, by promoting rainwater harvesting and filtering initiatives that might help cure the problem. But what makes the approach of the PITCHAfrica project truly unique and innovative is that it uses sport as a catalyst to demonstrate the dramatic potential of rainwater harvesting in these semi-arid regions. The centerpiece of the original proposal, which  culminated in a widely publicized and full-size “proof of concept” demonstration in the Port of Los Angeles in July 2010, during the World Cup Football finals, 

was the plan for a Rainwater Harvesting Street Football Stadium for 1000-1500 people, that could sit above a school and community education center, and would integrate a one - to three million liter water reservoir. Turnbull and Harrison refer to the old folk story about Stone Soup to explain the choice of a soccer field as an interface to capture, store and filter the water, a story in which the stone did not add anything to the taste of the soup, but served as a catalyst for hungry strangers in persuading local people of a town to to each share a small amount of their food in order to make a meal that everyone enjoy - a moral regarding the value of sharing..   In a similar way, says Harrison, if you design a project around something people can't live without - in this case soccer - amazing things could happen. A simple soccer pitch could be a catalyst where you could really make a difference to other issues such as HIV, food and security. 

The Waterbank campus in Laikipia, Kenya  comprises a series of unique, low-cost, rain harvesting building types invented by PITCHAfrica, and termed ‘Waterbanks’ because of their capacity to harvest and store high volumes of water at low cost, providing a year round supply. The annual harvesting capability of the Campus is in excess of 2 million liters of water, which is a lot in a semi-arid region.The buildings all provide clean drinking water to the students and irrigation to the conservation agriculture plots that form a patchwork across the campus. But the centerpiece is PITCHKenya, a rain harvesting football and volleyball stadium, which offers seating for 1500, and is also home to the Samuel Eto’o Football Academy. The structure also houses classrooms and an environmental education center, and has an annual rain harvesting and storage capacity of more than 1.5 million liters. Other buildings include a ‘Waterbank Dormitory’ for Girls, a ‘Waterbank Canteen’ and ‘Waterbank Latrines’, building prototypes developed by PITCHAfrica to meet essential water needs while addressing fundamental issues such as sanitation, nutrition, gender equality and health. Additional structures include rain harvesting boys dormitories and staff housing.The project has been implemented through a partnership with the locally based Zeitz Foundation and school community, and sponsorship provided by international star footballer Samuel Eto’o’s private foundation, and others.Originally it was also announced that a manual of instructions which would allow other school groups in other regions of Africa to build Waterbank buildings would be put open source online, but that hasn’t happened up till now.(mb / Mapping The Design World)