The story
A library designed to awaken curiosity after school hours.
In Ndego, students and adults had few educational spaces beyond the school day and few places that encouraged independent discovery. Joselyne Uwineza’s community-library thesis responds with separate but connected reading areas for children and adults, a reception, garden, and outdoor reading spaces. The building is planned within an existing school compound but is meant to belong to the wider community. Locally available adobe brick, local labor, solar energy, and rainwater harvesting address cost and limited infrastructure while allowing construction itself to build skill.
Daylight, landscape, sensory experience, and a clear sequence of spaces are used to make reading feel inviting rather than compulsory. Developed with Empowering Villages and Journeyman International, the project is still a proposal; the archive does not verify construction. Its architecture supports ownership: a familiar, low-cost place where people can choose what to read, gather around ideas, and develop learning beyond the timetable of a formal classroom.