Claudia Amico’s project in the capital of Senegal seemed straightforward. Involve a group of interested women, and plan the construction of a workshop and community centre in Dakar. And then do the same in the village of Joal, two hours away. She discovered some hard political and bureaucratic truths in Dakar – but encountered a determined and successful response from the women of Joal.

‘In Dakar,’ said Amico, ‘one of the government institutions seems to impede the availability of housing plots. A lack of democracy within the women’s organisation in Dakar that I was dealing with prevented the first project from going ahead, despite our having achieved a participative design process and construction proposal.’ In Joal, a village that handcrafts soap, dolls and tie-dye items as part of its own development programme, the story was quite different. ‘The women here are extremely under-privileged,’ said Amico. ‘But the projects they have in mind ignore geographical or political boundaries. They were given innovative and sustainable tools and trained themselves in construction to build the space they required. I’m not the main protagonist of this project – they are. I call them the femmes dynamiques.’

The space built by the women reveals a sound strategy. In it, meals and village products could be sold – and notably to the small, but micro-economically important, groups of tourists who pass through Joal. ‘The age of the women involved in the project was between 20 and 50. They had never done any building work before, but became collaboratively responsible for a building that became the most talked about in Joal.

‘A popular interest arose,’ said Amico, ‘not least because of the unprecedented tyre foundations we developed, and earthwall construction which did not require bricks ? and because it was the first building ever erected by women in Joal. We worked against the rigid deadline of my departure date, and the women coped not only with the hard work of construction, but continued to look after their households.’ Having successfully created a structure reminiscent in its ad hoc materials of Rural Studio’s pioneering low tech architecture in impoverished parts of the American south, and equipped with a construction manual left for them by Amico, les femmes dynamiques have another project in mind. They plan to build a tourist camp.