Zara's Center for AIDS-Impacted Youth

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Design Workshop (Landscape), Buro Happold (MEP, Environmental), Langan (Civil)

KSP began a collaboration with the Plutzik Goldwasser Family Foundation in March 2020, to design a new facility for Zara’s Center. Zara’s Center is a holistic program in support of AIDS-impacted children, paying for school fees and supporting the children through community, tutoring and meals. The KSP-led team, comprised of firms offering pro-bono services, created a new masterplan focused on passive design fundamentals, local vernacular construction methodologies, and on-site energy and water.

Looking Towards the Future

The five-acre site will comprise of classrooms, assembly spaces, vocational resources and residential quarters surrounded by orchards and vegetable gardens. As a campus designed to meet the needs of the whole child, it will also include playing fields, a swimming pool, and vocational resources. When complete, it will provide capacity for two hundred children.

The ambitious project has sub-divided into two phases to support the purchase of land from the Zimbabwe government.

Phase 1

Phase 1 of the master plan center on a 200-square-meter Resource Center for Orphans and Vulnerable Children. The Center provides a flexible community room for after-school and weekend activities with the children, a dormitory for volunteers and private living quarters for the Center’s caretaker, and two hen houses. It is foundational to their mission of improving the living standards of the children and will provide clean water to the neighbors, a precious local resource.

Sourced from local materials and created through local craftsmen, Phase 1 buildings are on schedule for a spring 2025 completion. This important first step will allow the PGF Foundation to purchase the land and will help Zara’s Center enroll more children into the program.

Design Charrettes with Local Staff and Students

KSP had the pleasure of visiting the Center to engage in design charrettes with local staff and students. The charrettes were made possible through two large suitcases of donated legos, brought from Chicago to Zimbabwe by KSP. Key program elements were identified through this engagement, including the need for a center courtyard with water feature, the role of eggs to their daily diet, the need to teach the children how to swim, and the goal to have a recognizable landmark, a symbol of “home” for the children.

Self-Sustaining Infrastructure

Zara's Center is designed to be a model of sustainability within the education sector, operating off-the-grid, and with a low embodied carbon footprint. As a result, it is a highly resilient campus. Energized by solar power, all electricity comes from the sun, with an initial set of panels installed to power the water hole pump, and additional Phase 1 solar electric and water panels installed on each roof of the three new buildings. All materials are locally procured. Local brick is both enclosure and structure, and serves as finish material both inside and out.

Brick: A Source of Cultural History

As part of a holistic design strategy, local brick was used as a structure, enclosure and finish. A material with deep cultural roots to Zimbabwe, significant brick structures, including the Great Zimbabwe and Khami Ruins, are sources of pride for the local people.

These structures, dating back to the 13-15th centuries, included highly patterned masonry units arranged into large scale stepped fortresses that were built within the hilly terrain. They were a decorative extension of the natural landscape.

The design of Zara's Center celebrates their cultural history in the use and patterning of the brick.

Masonry Techniques | Construction Progress

An alternating rowlock brick bond, inspired by the Khami ruins, ties double and triple wythe structural walls together. To add texture, selective bricks are pushed outward to produce texture and shadow both inside and out, lending both exterior and interior experiences a sense of variety, playfulness and scale. Where these walls extend into porticoes, selective bricks are eliminated from the pattern to create a screen that balances visibility and privacy, bringing beautiful shadow play into everyday circulation and use.

The building itself is not just a mere building. For me, it is a symbol of hope, it is a symbol of excellence, it is a symbol of overcoming difficulties and will be a safe haven for our children. The architecture is so brilliant, there is a fusion of the Great Zimbabwe chevrons. My hope is that it will become a centerpiece for the people of Emganwini… a place where they know their children will be cared for.

Gibson Connick, Executive Director