African Design Magazine October 2015 | Page 8

The SOS Children’s Village in Djibouti, designed by Urko Sanchez Architects, is a medina for children designed according to the extreme weather conditions, providing shades and ventilation with pedestrian streets that open themselves creating squares for children to play. D jibouti is located on the Horn of Africa which suffers from the persistent droughts and famines associated with the area. 8 When the architects were approached by SOS Children to design and build a small village compiling 15 houses to run familystrengthening programmes, they decided to build a medina with the singularity of being for children. This allowed them to build the homes in a very local way – narrow streets that would shade africandesignmagazine.com