Antoinette Yetunde Oni

The Honourable Harvest, M ARCH: Architecture, YourNOVA Award, 2022

The Honourable Harvest is an architectural and land-use design project about developing a reforestation institute in Kaduna, northern Nigeria.

Using indigenous construction methods and traditional materials, it aims to boost reforestation in the wider Sahel region of West Africa. My research explores the potential of abundant biomass generated from agricultural processes and plant life, and the use of regenerative natural resources to combat Sahelian desertification. Currently the desert expansion is depleting arable land, causing food insecurity and drought, and displacing communities from the Lake Chad Basin. According to the United Nations, Nigeria has the highest deforestation rate in the world, losing around 400,000 hectares of forests a year.

My reforestation institute is on the Ahmadu Bello University Farm in Zaria. Grappling with the effects of unsustainable farming practices and soil degradation, this urban farm is arid, littered and underused. Situated between the agriculture faculty and the veterinary sciences department, the proposed earthen ecclesia assembly space is enveloped by verdant land partitioned into agroforests, rotational grazing pastures and sacred groves. The latter is land strictly designated for ecological replenishment to resist the encroaching Sahel.

Informed by various indigenous cultures and sacred forms, the institute’s design uses traditional thatched roofing, wattle-and-daub walls and compressed earth brick to highlight the beauty and functionality of local bio-based materials. Through spatial design, resource planning and cyclical farming practices, it revives climate-resilient local economies and customs that are ecologically restorative and culturally informed. The Honourable Harvest aims to promote reciprocity, respect and reverence for the living and non-living natural world. It sets a methodology, realising viable alternatives to extractive land practices for the economic and environmental (re)generation of the community.

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