City Repair Addis Ababa

Over the course of my eight weeks in Ethiopia, I delivered three slideshow lectures at the architecture department of the University of Addis Ababa. I did this not for any financial compensation, but rather in the hopes that I would plant radical ideas on Abyssinian soil. Evidently, my tireless efforts paid off, because April 8, 2006, saw the first-ever City Repair-inspired placemaking project in Africa.

The graduating students already had it in their minds to leave some kind of legacy behind on the building technology campus. The suggestion of a cob bench construction was warmly received, and in my last three days in the country, I facilitated the design/build of a mud loveseat for two by several dozen students. As the photos below show, the project was a complete success.

We held an impromptu design competition among the participants to determine what we wanted the bench to look like, and then voted on the different designs. Zelalem's model was chosen because it was possible to execute in a short amount of time, but it was still sexy enough to stand out from the pack. Once the basic design was decided upon, we got to work in a major way.

 If you have an image of an African architecture school being any less advanced than an American one, let me at once dispel these thoughts from your mind. These students commonly use computers and do a lot of drafting and model-building, just like their Canadian counterparts. But they put down their mice, got out from behind their desks, and weren't afraid to get real muddy for the cause.

In fact, the students really took to the cob. I have some incredible video footage of the predictable mudball fights, mudpile tackles, and general mud mayhum. Many of them have expressed great interest in the potential project at Awra Amba for a year from now. It would be an excellent opportunity to learn so much from each other, for us to not only build a change, but to be the change we want to build.

Now that I have returned to my Middle Eastern perch, I intend to spend the next several years creating a Canaanite culture for natural building. But I hope that my example of "Have Mud, Will Travel" will inspire some other traveling preachers and practitioners of natural building to spread seeds of art and ecology far and wide. Viva City Repair Addis Ababa! Viva Cob!