Moriah

I am currently working for an NGO in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania called Art in Tanzania (http://www.artintanzania.org/). I am working with another American, Frances Jemini, to design the Mapinga Educational and Vocational Center (http://www.mapingaone.com/) on a 13 acre piece of land just north of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The center will include a nursery, primary, and secondary school; arts center; and all the necessary support spaces for those buildings such as housing for students and staff, kitchen and dining facilities, recreational fields, etc. Kari Korhonen, Director of Art in Tanzania, has been envisioning a center like this for a long time and he and I started collaborating on this project when I was a volunteer with Art in Tanzania in 2008 after I did a presentation to share my architectural thesis project. The project has just grown from there. I was introduced to Tanzania (specifically the village of Pommern near Iringa) by Nicole DiDomenico, Director of Volunteer Programs at Norwich University, when I wanted my architectural thesis site to be in a developing country. I traveled to Pommern, Tanzania for three weeks with Global Volunteers and Norwich University in December 2006 (for my thesis research) and again in June 2007 as part of a larger University group trip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap0vMMt_DFc). After graduating with my Master of Architecture degree in May 2007, I decided that I wasn’t ready to for a permanent desk job and that I wasn’t finished in Tanzania quite yet. So in January 2008, I returned to Dar es Salaam for a volunteering internship with Art in Tanzania for 3-1/2 months, which was focused around video editing and production (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-jT6dQQ5pY, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehjbX_ehwPo). Art in Tanzania invited me back as a staff member, so in January 2009 I returned to Dar to work on the design team for the Mapinga Educational and Vocational Center. A little background on my thesis, which was titled: “Architecture of Self-Reliance”: My thesis question: “How can a media representation of music and dance inspire an architecture that facilitates education, awareness, and self-reliance in disconnected areas of the world?” My thesis paper abstract: Africa is often simply viewed as the place of extreme poverty and AIDS. Embedded within all these struggles are rich cultures that are slowly disintegrating. Music and dance are part of almost every culture around the world. As a representation of pop culture, music videos join sound with visual representations inspired by pieces of music. Documenting and sharing artistic culture with an international audience, through a partnering service organization, can create awareness and the economic means for an underdeveloped African village to become self-reliant. Many organizations whose mission is to aid Africa, offer temporary fixes rather than long-term solutions. With a facility that creates a way for African people to showcase their artistic culture to the rest of the world through a marketable and artistic media form, perhaps the people can also become self-reliant. Part of my thesis presentation also included a short video that was intended to illustrate my premise, design process, and solution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo-GdTDIfxk