RWANDA RESILIENT REGENERATIVE CITY

The Third Industrial Revolution is on its way and with it will come dramatic changes in the practice of architecture. Moving of building materials and products around the globe as we do now will become much lessncommon as technology facilitates the local fabrication of goods.This would benefit landlocked countries where importation is especially impractical.Vice versa it will encourage country such as Rwanda to utilize its local timber in architecture, at the same time increasing its competiveness of local economies.

By inducing afforestation in the underused urban area to replace imported construction with locally made CLT architecture. By utilize the state of art of Lignor’s Cross Laminated Strand Timber (CLSTTM) with a new CLT construction system, the forest to urban fabric ratio would be controlled to the minimum while accommodating the growing population with vast urban greenspace. Ultimately,, instead of being built under enormous carbon footprint, Kigali would be city of carbon storage instead.

New CLT construction system is designed

1.The brick system will allow the same structural property with less material used.

2.The edge wise joint will replace conventional metal joints, and windows and door opening will made by CLT alone, hence creating a holistic architecture that will require no materials import, but, only with CLT.

The state of art of Lignor’s Cross Laminated StrandTimber (CLSTTM) which has a higher log to timber conversion ratio is to use pulp wood – Eucalyptus Grandis with stranding technology which allows a higher log to timber conversion rate (80%) with a much faster rotation of only 12 years compared to conventional spruce for CLT which require 28 years rotation.2This may further reduce the forest to urban fabric ratio. By using Eucalyptus Grandis which grow best in valley environment with vast water resource, the un- derused valley area in Kigali can be used for forestation.This will give green space as well as timber source for local CLST construction. Furthermore, it would help filtering city water going back to earth as well as alleviate flooding problems.