The Rwandan cricket stadium was built near the capital of the country, Kigali, in its new suburb of Gahanga. Gahanga is to become an economic, educational and technological center, and an Olympic arena is also planned there. But so far, only an international standard cricket stadium has been built, and without the participation of the state.
The Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation conceived of building the stadium back in 2011, construction began in 2015 and completed last year. The author of the project, the studio Light Earth Designs, brings together British and South African researchers and practitioners in the construction of lightweight vaulted structures from adobe and earth tiles and bricks.
The method is based on the so-called
Catalan, or tiled, vaults. The material used in Rwanda was 66,000 on-site tiles made from compressed soil with little cement - no firing. They were laid out on wooden formwork, in six layers, forming spans up to 16 meters. Taking into account the seismic situation, the resulting vaults are reinforced with a geogrid, covered with an insulating membrane, and on top - with a layer of broken granite, one of the most common materials in the country: it increased the weight and stability of the building. This construction technology allows the use of local, often unskilled workers, local materials, and minimizes CO2 emissions. The first example of this approach was the Visitor Center of the Mapungubwe National Park in South Africa by architect Peter Rich, the best building of the year according to the WAF-2009 festival. Rich also participates in Light Earth Designs, but he has not been involved in the stadium.
Concrete blocks were erected under the vaults, where changing rooms, an office, a restaurant, and utility rooms are located. On the blocks, on the "mezzanine" floor, there is a bar and a club; their floor is lined with local tiles, bricks are also used, including in the form of openwork masonry. When firing these tiles and bricks, agricultural waste was used as fuel, and bricks were made in ovens of increased efficiency (work of SKAT Consulting, a Swiss NGO).
Part of the granite comes from local waste products from floor tiles and countertops. Plywood rectangles for pressing tiles for vaults were then used to make tabletops for the stadium, formwork on doors and other joinery components. Retaining walls are built of local granite boulders or are left hollow for planting.
The building itself grows out of the embankment resulting from the leveling of the sports field. Its vaults are designed to resemble the flight of a ball or the silhouette of a hilly landscape typical of Rwanda.
