The 2026 Kaira Looro Architecture Competition continues its mission to address real-world humanitarian challenges through thoughtful, localized design. Organized annually by the nonprofit Balouo Salo, the contest focuses on southern Senegal’s rural Casamance region, an area where villages average roughly 1,500 residents and formal infrastructure is scarce. The 2026 edition tasked young international architects and students with designing a versatile community center, a space intended to host educational workshops, everyday gatherings, and larger village events as initially reported by Designboom. Rather than proposing monumental or technologically complex structures, participants were asked to design for self-construction, prioritizing low-cost techniques, zero heavy machinery, and local participation.
This is the design that won the competition first prize. Image by Afroditi Ioannidou and Vladimir Gligorovski. Image source: Designboom
Shaping Community Life in Senegal
In rural Senegal, architecture acts as a vital backbone for social cohesion. The Kaira Looro initiative is actively shaping community architecture across the region by shifting the focus away from imported industrial materials toward participatory, place-based building. By encouraging designs that residents can physically build and maintain themselves, the competition fosters local ownership and skill-building. The resulting structures do not sit isolated from their context; instead, they serve as adaptable social hubs where daily education, craftsmanship, and civic life converge naturally under one collective umbrella.
Emerging Talent and Global Participation
The competition draws a diverse roster of emerging architects, designers, and students from across the globe, all tasked with interpreting the environmental and social context of Casamance. Among this international cohort, the proposal submitted by Greece-based architects Afroditi Ioannidou and Vladimir Gligorovski of K-Studio earned the top honor. Their design stood out to the jury for its ability to balance spatial elegance with absolute practical feasibility, translating complex cultural nuances into a simple, buildable vision.
The Winning Vision of Afroditi Ioannidou and Vladimir Gligorovski
Ioannidou and Gligorovski winning design takes inspiration from a familiar regional architectural typology, the traditional Casamance impluvium house. Historically, these domestic homes are arranged inward around a central courtyard, designed to gather family members, light, and rainwater. The architects expanded this domestic layout to the scale of an entire village. Their proposal organizes spaces along a gently twisting arc, featuring a library, study zones, workshop areas, and service spaces that all open toward a central graveled clearing. The sweeping bamboo roof rises unevenly along the arc before dipping low to trace a loose semicircle around the central yard, creating an amphitheater-like setting that accommodates both quiet individual study and large community gatherings.
Side view of the design that won the competition first prize. Image by Afroditi Ioannidou and Vladimir Gligorovski. Image source: Designboom
Exclusive Rammed-Earth Integration
A central feature of the winning project is its heavy reliance on rammed earth, constructed using the region’s rich laterite soil. These solid earthen volumes provide substantial thermal mass, protecting interior spaces from the harsh tropical heat. To complement the solid mass, the design integrates small, diamond-shaped wall perforations that filter daylight into the rooms while maintaining continuous airflow. Large bamboo shutters can be swung fully open, allowing the enclosed rammed-earth rooms to seamlessly merge with the outer covered spaces into one expanded, open-air pavilion.
Translating Rural Housing Traditions into Daily Lifestyle
The project deeply respects the lifestyle of rural Senegal, where daily routine is closely tied to communal outdoor living. By reinterpreting the impluvium house, the center integrates rain harvesting and natural cooling into the very rhythm of the building. The expansive dual-pitched roof collects rainwater, directing it directly to handwashing stations, while the central gravel yard allows excess storm water to absorb naturally into the ground during the rainy season. Furthermore, the roof’s raised ridge line creates a natural stack effect, drawing hot air up and out while pulling cooler air through the open spaces below, eliminating the need for mechanical cooling.
From Design Brief to Physical Construction
Unlike many theoretical design competitions, Kaira Looro ensures that the winning project transitions directly from paper to reality. As part of the first-prize award, Balouo Salo secures funding and oversees the physical construction of the winning proposal. This phase involves direct collaboration with local village residents, transforming the architectural drawings into an active construction site driven by local labor and collective engagement.
Back view and also entrance of the design that won the competition first prize. Image by Afroditi Ioannidou and Vladimir Gligorovski. Image source: Designboom
Low-Tech Construction Methods
The build process is specifically engineered to remain straightforward on site. The primary structural framework utilizes locally harvested bamboo joined simply with rope and galvanized wire, supported by double columns and beams. Beneath an outer metal roof cladding, a layer of thatch provides necessary thermal insulation. Because all materials, bamboo, laterite earth, gravel, and thatch, are sourced locally or easily manipulated by hand, the construction process itself serves as a community workshop, empowering local builders with techniques they can reuse in future village projects.
Second and Third Prize Recognition
The competition jury also recognized two other exceptional schemes that tackled the brief with distinct material strategies. Second prize was awarded to Marta Kuczynska and Jakub Czak of Poland, who designed a crisp rectangular structure featuring flexible rooms and handwoven pivoting panels wrapped around a central shaded communal space. Third prize went to a Colombian team, Karol Eliana Cuellar Narváez, Jhuliana Giraldo, Juan Sebastian Piedrahita, Juan Santiago Uribe, and Oscar Valencia, for their proposal of a partially excavated crescent of rammed earth that leverages the thermal earth beneath to naturally regulate indoor temperatures.
This is the design that won the second prize of the competition. Image by Marta Kuczynska and Jakub Czak. Image source: Designboom
Redefining Global Rural Community Development
The success of the 2026 Kaira Looro Competition demonstrates how thoughtful, context-driven architecture can redefine rural development globally. By proving that high-caliber, beautiful design does not require expensive materials or complex supply chains, projects like this offer a compelling alternative to standardized modern development. By elevating hyper-local materials, indigenous housing logic, and community-led construction, the initiative sets a benchmark for how architects worldwide can address climate resilience, cultural heritage, and social empowerment in vulnerable rural environments.
This is the design that won the third prize. Image by Karol Eliana Cuellar Narváez, Jhuliana Giraldo, Juan Sebastian Piedrahita, Juan Santiago Uribe and Oscar Valencia. Image source: Designboom
Project Info:
Project Name: First Prize, Kaira Looro 2026 Community Center
Designers: Afroditi Ioannidou, Vladimir Gligorovski
Location: Casamance, Southern Senegal
Competition: Kaira Looro Architecture Competition 2026
Organizer: Kaira Looro & Balouo Salo
Status: winning proposal
Editorial Note: At Buildace Magazine, we publish this feature in good faith, with full attribution to Designboom as the primary source for the original project coverage. We celebrate the design prowess and unmatched creativity and project ideas of Kaira Looro & Balouo Salo as they continue to shape the future of global architecture through Kaira Looro Architecture Competition.
Alex Kabiru
Architecture Editor, Buildace Magazine