- Location: 2°17’37.3″S 40°54’48.6″E
- 30-35 Celsius highs year-round
- Lamu Island is a UNESCO World Heritage site and biosphere reserve
- Historic character of Lamu is under threat, due to the nearby LAPSET shipping port, East Africa’s largest when finished
The Indian Ocean archipelago of Lamu, on the northern coast of Kenya, is one of the last places on Earth where you can find an ecology and local culture that survived the 20th century free of the impacts of automobiles and sprawl. In the old town of Lamu, and the nearby village of Shela, there are narrow streets of sand in the shade of 3-6-story buildings.
Here on the equator, life thrives in the sultry heat on the coast all year long. The local ancient urban design and architecture strategies have created oases of civilized, shady calm, despite the unrelenting sun.
And yet, Lamu is a newly discovered, photo-worthy, international jet-set retreat that is extremely vulnerable to the negative effects of tourism. There’s a need for a respectful expansion to such an easy-to-overlove location–one that creates new space to handle the increasingly large crowds that come from all over the world. This overcrowding is especially evident during the international culture and yoga festivals.
Design Objective
The plan for the new village on Manda Island includes new hotels and retail, local housing, event space, public squares, ferry port, marina, and quay, which will:
- preserve the delicate Island of Lamu by creating new ultra-compact development next to the small airport on Manda Island
- use the existing local architecture as a point of departure, so that the procedurally-generated New Town will appear as if it had grown organically over time
To satisfy the local interest in developing sustainable tourism strategies, this project will also explore:
- new opportunities for historically-compatible solar panel designs
- pioneer coral-reef friendly, sunscreen-free tropical island tourism
- maximization of local climate-optimized insect-protein production, for local consumption and export
These pages explore experimental, forward-leaning concepts. We mean no offense by these ideas, and we can assure you that they don’t currently exist…yet.
Check out our other Property Experiments here.