In the heart of Bamako, the architect Mariam Sy leads a calm revolution – each a handful of earth. Her vision merges Mali's old building wisdom with contemporary design and creates structures that seem to rise organically from the Sahel floor.
“When I was 15 I told my parents, I wanted to be an architect. They found it a good idea and I had to leave my girl's school to visit a technical college in Bamako,” Sy told RFI.
She brought this decision on a path from Mali to Belgium, where she acquired her architecture and then after France's prestigious craterre research center in Grenoble.
There she dominated the art of building with the earth, a material in the core of her sustainable designs. Today the Architerre company from SY is at the top of the environmentally friendly architecture in West Africa.
Structure with nature
Through projects that range from houses and medical centers to mosque renovations in Timbuktu, SY shows how traditional materials can meet modern needs and at the same time respect the environment.
“Whether soil, stone or whatever we can find locally, the idea is really to consume as little energy as possible under construction and use materials that are suitable for local temperature,” she says.
“In Mali, the soil is one of the most common and best known local materials, and for us Sahelier is the advantage that these materials really adapt to our climate.”
The work of SY has taken into account Mali beyond Mali and inspired the customers across Africa to accept environmentally friendly tree methods.
She was a co -founder of facts Sahel, a network of architects, bricklayers, engineers, researchers and writers who are combined by a common vision of environmentally friendly building practices.
“This question of ecological irresponsible architecture affects everyone. Although we know that we are not the largest energy consumers in the Sahelose, we still suffer from the consequences,” she says.
“It is therefore important to take into account new technologies and questions that affect everyone and apply them to ourselves. We look at ourselves activists. For us, our work is really activism.”
Rediscover African identity
The revival of traditional design techniques is part of a greater movement in all of Africa.
The French architect Jean-Marc Lalo, who organizes exchange seminars between African and European architects, sees it as a significant change in the architectural landscape of the continent.
“There is a question of the African architectural identity and an enthusiasm for the rediscovery of traditional earth construction techniques,” he says.
“Secondly, it is also one of the future prospects of Africa: to make a direct jump into the building with biological, local materials. The earth is indeed perfectly adapted to it.”
From Senegal to Morocco, the countries are increasingly using sustainable practices. In Benin, the government commissioned top-class projects on earth, including works by the Pritzker Prize winner Francis Kéré.
Similar innovations meet in Burkina Faso and beyond, whereby compressed earthstones become a cornerstone of modern African architecture.
The architect Francis Diebedo Kéré, born in Burkina Faso, wins on the prestigious Pritzker Prize
From tradition to innovation
Sys Next project-a school in Bamako, which has been built exclusively with earth-based techniques-sold their philosophy to combine tradition with innovation.
“How do we humans explain the return to these materials that have so many advantages in many areas of life, not only in the construction?” Sy is surprised when it inspects a wall of pressure from printers.
For it, every earth-building structure is more than just a building-a bridge between Mali's architectural heritage and its sustainable future, which shows how old wisdom can solve modern challenges.
This story was adapted by Frédéric Garat from the original version in French