Robin Kent Architecture & Conservation

Although many aspects of Rwanda's rich cultural heritage have been recorded, some traditional building techniques have all but disappeared, reflecting the massive population growth in this most densely populated of African countries, as well as a century of European influence. Even recent buildings that maintain elements of the centuries-old traditional, sustainable approach to construction are now under threat. Our field study in 2005 identified an urgent need for conservation and research to ensure that Rwanda does not lose the benefits of traditional construction and the historic craft skills and memories associated with it in the course of continuing modernization. As in other African countries, Rwanda has considerable potential for cultural tourism and associated economic regeneration, which can only be fully realised by a new appreciation of its heritage.

The circular beehive-type dwelling or roundhouse was the norm for Rwandans, as for most peoples in sub-equatorial Africa , until the arrival of the Germans in 1894. Much is known about the roundhouses of Rwanda and the National Museum at Butare has a well-maintained example. The house stands at the centre of a figure-of-8 courtyard surrounded by bamboo palisades and thorn hedges with a gate between two pillars formed of bundles of bamboo. The front court, or rugo is for receiving visitors, dancing and gathering cattle, while the more domestic back yard, the igikari, contains granaries, annexes and other outbuildings.

The basis of the dome-shaped roundhouse is a circle of closely spaced cypress poles with their ends buried in the ground, their tapering tops bent down to the centre and tied in place with concentric rings of reeds and bamboo. A circular ceiling, woven separately and propped in place before the poles are bent over, provides an inner layer. The exterior is thatched with overlapping bunches of grass tied to the outer frame rings with vegetable fibres. A jutting porch (igihabo), protects the entrance, with a low wall or threshold around it preventing surface water getting inside, and forming a place to leave shoes when entering the house. Additional support for the dome and ceiling is provided internally by rows of vertical props with shaped capitals fixed to the rings, which double as loadbearing partitions, with geometrically patterned woven bamboo mats sprung between the poles. These divide the interior into an entrance vestibule (muirebe) leading, via a corridor to the left (umugendo), to the family living area (ikirambi), with a small central hearth and, against the left wall, a sideboard-display of milk pitchers, beer and butter gourds. Opening off this focal area at the rear is a store-cum-women's dressing room (haruguru), while to the right, a sleeping compartment (uburiri) with a bed-platform and door-flap occupy the most private part of the interior. The layout reflects a simple but sophisticated articulation of family and social functions.

The size of the courtyards and traditional roundhouse was directly related to the wealth and status of the owning family. Exactly the same construction and layout but on the largest possible scale is found in the reconstructed royal palace of the Mwami or King of Rwanda, at Nyanza, between Butare and Kigali . Here the two courtyards, with the igikari containing the slightly smaller roundhouses of the keeper of the beer and the keeper of the milk, are in good condition but, sadly, the impressive royal roundhouse itself is in a poor state of repair. The grass and papyrus construction materials, originally protected from decay by smoke from the central hearth, are rotting. Additional raking props have had to be introduced to support the enormous dome internally, while externally, plastic sheeting and steel framing have been used to patch the walls.

Many conservation problems can be traced to such inappropriate use of impermeable modern materials, but traditional roundhouses are very vulnerable to fire and health risks to staff and visitors unfortunately prevent the hearths being used. It is likely that the decay will accelerate unless appropriate repairs are carried out. As natural grassland and marshes are a diminishing resource in this heavily populated country, research is needed into the construction materials, to identify and record the types of timbers and fibres used for different parts of the building and source suitable compatible materials for repairs. People should be found who are capable of training others in traditional construction and repairs, to keep the techniques alive and revive those that are being lost. It may be that some of these could be introduced at the excellent National Museum Craft School, eg. ceiling and partition mat-weaving. Research may also reveal means of preserving thatch without using smoke (smoke inhalation accounts for some 1.6m deaths p.a. world wide, so that this could have wider benefits throughout the developing world).

The museum and the palace are both run by the ORTPN, Rwanda's national tourism agency and the National Museum contains one of the best ethnographic collections in Africa, providing visitors with a comprehensive and detailed insight into the rich pre-colonial culture of Rwanda. Nyanza is a site of great symbolic importance, marking the transition from the monarchy to democracy as well as from ancient to colonial lifestyle. By contrast with the old palace, the adjacent 1930s palace comprises a 5-room concrete bungalow which is well maintained but rather bare, lacking most of its furnishings apart from a few items in glass cases. (The same comment applies to Richard Kandt's House in Kigali ). This makes it hard for visitors to imagine what it was like in its heyday: Apparently many of the contents are in storage in the Royal Museum at Tervuren, in Belgium, and it is to be hoped that they will soon be returned to Rwanda in recognition of the new post-genocide stability, as 'aid in kind' to help Rwanda's nascent tourist industry. Alternatively it may be possible to make replica furnishings in the National Museum Craft School. There is also potential for multi-lingual interpretation; literature and postcards; performances by the Intore dancers; a café or restaurant for refreshments, and (at Nyanza) improvements in road access and signposting, to encourage more tourists.

For nearly a century after the arrival of Eurpoeans, the construction of most Rwandan buildings retained the traditional timber framed approach. Initially, during the 1920s, the mesh of poles was filled with mud to provide a more fireproof form of construction that did not require so many reeds. During the 1930s the increasing availability of larger section timbers due to the introduction of eucalyptus and the influence of colonial building styles, prompted the development of the rectangular plan, and small shuttered windows. Some houses in the countryside still occupy stockaded enclosures and some outbuildings eg. for animals are still circular. However, traditional circular dwellings have now generally been displaced by rectangular houses, with a single or double-pile plan that reinterprets the traditional plan as a double-fronted single storey house. Accommodation for cooking and livestock remain separate in adjoining monopitch buildings at the side or rear, with detached monopitch earth closets. The windows are mostly unglazed with wooden shutters, used mainly for lighting when the doors are closed. Traditional floors of beaten earth, with vegetable fibre underlays and woven mats have been replaced by concrete slabs, which are presumably regarded as cleaner and more long lasting, though they are not so soft or warm under foot.

The straight walls of rectangular houses have less resistance to lateral forces and consequently need more massive construction than the traditional curved walls. The mud is prepared in mud pits or dug adjacent to building sites, or when digging pit latrines. The earth in Rwanda appears to have a fairly high clay content and includes well graded gravel, making it ideal for building, the non-vegetative sub-soil being preferred to the surface soil. Only water and straw, dung or ashes are required to bind it. Much domestic construction still uses the timber frame approach clearly derived from traditional construction, with mud infil. In this, the main upright posts trace the outline of the building including gables, and smaller horizontal members are interwoven or tied to them to form the grid framework. This is then infilled with wet-mud lump, built up between and around the matrix to form a monolithic timber-reinforced wall.

The popularity of the timber frame has ensured that timber has remained a major building material in Rwanda, sustainably managed as coppiced woodland in a way that was common in pre-industrial Europe. Eucalyptus and Bluegum, introduced in the 1920s, provide more durability, eg. against termites and damp, the main causes of decay of traditional timber frame buildings in Africa. Timber is used in the round both for construction and as scaffolding, minimizing waste. Larger trees are reduced by hand sawing in pits and larger timbers and planks are used both vertically for palisade fences and horizontally as cladding for timber frame buildings, such as workshops, stores and animal houses. Roof structures are made up of round rafters on purlins, with double pitch roofs supported by built-in timber trusses made up with struts rather than braces, possibly reflecting their origin in the props which supported the roofs of round houses. The rafters support a dense mesh of bamboo battens, again reflecting the mesh of timbers in traditional roundhouse construction.

No doubt part of the reason for the change from circular to rectangular house plans was the diminishing availability of grassland and marshes as more and more land was 'improved' for farming; roofing tiles and metal sheets are also easier to lay on rectangular plans. They require less skilled maintenance, but are of course also less sustainable than thatch and provide much lower levels of heat insulation. Most dwellings in Rwanda today are covered with clay tiles burnt in wood-fired kilns, although smaller buildings such as privies are still covered in banana leaves or other vegetation. The clay tiles are tied (at the eaves) or more generally, mortared in position directly on top of a dense mat of bamboo battens, though the support provided sometimes appears minimal. Eaves are wide to protect the mud walls (though verges tend to be flush, leaving gables unprotected). Galvanized sheet corrugated iron is also common as a roof covering, despite rusting fast in the tropics, and profile metal sheet cladding with various protective coatings is also found on more recent buildings in Kigali.

In the last 50 years, many vernacular buildings in Rwanda have dispensed altogether with timber frame walls in favour of adobe bricks dug close to the site, mixed with water, dung, ashes or chopped straw, moulded in wooden boxes and sun-dried before use. While many are built directly off the ground, or a shallow foundation trench, some are constructed off stone or baked brick plinth walls to protect them from water erosion at the foot. Such walls also require head protection during construction, and wide eaves. However, they provide good thermal insulation. Relatively slow to construct, they must be left to dry out every few courses and completed before the wet season. As constructed in Rwanda , they are only used for single storey buildings, whereas the technology should allow larger and taller structures. The use of cement as a binder, advocated by some authorities, makes the blocks more durable and structurally versatile but removes the environmental benefits.

Burnt clay bricks are also occasionally used, often baked in rural brick kilns. There is also a large brickworks just to the W of Kigali which supplies bricks for larger buildings of 2 or more-storeys, eg. in Kigali , which tend to be built in brick and cement render, or reinforced concrete. Some 1930s colonial dwellings are similarly brick built.

All mud walls must be finished with render to protect them from excessive drying-cracking, which exposes timber frames to dampness and rot, and also from rainwater erosion and wash-out of the joints (in the case of adobe). The use of mud as a finish for woven frame walling was already known in traditional construction for rendering items such as granaries impermeable. Mixtures of mud, grass and cow-dung were traditionally used for this, and renders were sometimes decorated in geometrical pattern colour-washes or different coloured clays, eg. kaolin. The disadvantages of mud construction are likely to be increased by the use of cement renders and plasters, which are becoming common and appear to be regarded as more 'modern', though they do not 'breathe' or bind so easily to mud substrates, and tend to fall off in chunks if they are not reinforced eg. with chicken wire.

Town planning is in its infancy in Rwanda, with single dwellings scattered throughout the countryside on smallholdings, sometimes in remote and inaccessible locations, and a growing ring of uncontrolled suburbs around Kigali. However, the building industry in Rwanda remains generally unaffected by the problems experienced in many developed countries: Most domestic scale buildings are still built using timber and mud, which are cheap, sustainable materials, which have low-embodied energy and low emissions, and produce buildings that are easy to maintain, non-damaging to the environment, and can be recyled. In many ways, construction in Rwanda today parallels pre-industrial Europe up to about 200 years ago, and uses techniques we are belatedly trying to reclaim to conserve our environment as well as our own heritage. Rwanda offers a fertile field for study, but the advantages of traditional construction techniques do not appear to be readily understood by most Rwandans and there is a very real danger that, with increasing stability, population and prosperity, surviving knowledge of traditional materials and skills may be lost as perceived 'modern' materials like concrete, steel and glass take over. There is a pressing need for research into improvements to make traditional construction approaches more durable, versatile, safe and economic; building on traditional construction techniques and craft skills, rather than pursuing the chimera of 'modern' options marketed by foreign highly industrialized economies.

In Rwanda, as in many other countries, re-evaluation of traditional construction is the key to developing modern buildings that respond better to the environment and also express a distinctive national style and identity. An important part of this should be a new appreciation of Rwanda's unique cultural identity, including its heritage of historic buildings and building techniques. In addition to providing a focus for tourism and economic regeneration, this will help to provide the nation with a sense of identity that extends beyond its recent unhappy history and builds national pride and self respect.

If you would like to discuss any projects with similar themes, please feel free to contact us.

Rwanda , the 'Land of a Thousand Hills', is in the highlands of East Africa and has about half the area of Scotland but a similar size population (c.6M). When the first Europeans arrived in 1894 they were amazed to find not just native tribes but a highly organised self contained nation state with a king and a ruling class, a unique language, music, poetry, an oral history stretching back at least 500 years, and an army with soldiers resembling ancient Egyptians. There was no need for the colonialists to draw its boundaries because it already had long-established national borders. The Rwandans worshipped a supreme creator God, Imana (who they believed came home to Rwanda each night, as the centre of the earth). Missionaries followed the colonialists, the king became a Christian, and the nation is today about 80% Christian. Initially absorbed into German East Africa , Rwanda became a Belgian colony after the First World War, bringing improved health, education and communications. But the Europeans continued to be fascinated with Rwandan society, which they felt proved Darwin 's theory of evolution. The colonial government favoured the taller, 'more evolved' Tutsi aristocracy and discriminated against the shorter Hutu farmers, and the even smaller Twa, or pigmy hunter-gatherers, although historically these divisions had been socio-economic as much as racial, with much mobility and intermarriage between the 'classes'. Despite this, in 1932, the Belgians introduced ID cards which divided the population into Tutsi (15%), Hutu (80%) and Twa (5%). After the Second World War, there was a sudden change of colonial policy in favour of the previously downtrodden, and consequently resentful, Hutu majority, which led to a number of massacres of Tutsis around the time of independence in 1960. Many Tutsis fled to the surrounding countries and founded the RPF to 'liberate' Rwanda from the increasingly corrupt Hutu government. By 1994, this had become a war in which the remaining Tutsis in Rwanda, generally the more educated and well-off, were viewed as a threat to the government, and its 'solution' was the genocide between April and July 1994, when around 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were systematically murdered, in the world's worst genocide since the Second World War. The killing was only halted by the successful invasion of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Many of those murdered managed to send their children to safety with relatives or friends and there are now 300,000 orphans of the genocide as well as thousands of rape victims and widows, making Rwanda one of the youngest countries in the world. About 115,000 people are still in prison for crimes committed and the nation faces major challenges of reconciliation, forgiveness and reunification, on top of the extreme poverty that is common to African developing countries. The new government under the former leader of the RPF, Paul Kagame, discourages distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi and is rebuilding the country on the basis of a unified Rwandese identity.

Robin Kent, a chartered architect accredited in building conservation, visited Rwanda in July 2005. He has managed research and publications on historic traditional building materials and construction, as well as conservation projects using traditional building materials.

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Booth, Janice, and Philip Briggs. Rwanda. The Bradt Travel Guide, 2nd ed. 2004.

Klotchkoff, Jean-Claude with Frederique Letourneux. Rwanda Today. Jaguar, 2003.

Schilderman, T. La Maison. Guide pour la construction et l'amelioration de l'habitat au Rwanda . Kigali , 1987.

Schilderman, T. Articles in Oliver, Paul. Vernacular Architecture of the World. CUP.

NOTE | This article is copyright. It is offered as a personal contribution to discussion on the place of the built heritage and conservation in developing countries and Rwanda in particular. No responsibility is accepted for errors or omissions. It provides pointers to general principles and should not be viewed as a comprehensive guide.