Campus Foot Tambacounda is conceived as a protective village for children, combining an orphanage, a vocational training centre and a football academy within a single landscape-led campus in Tambacounda, Senegal.
Rather than designing the institution as a single compact building, ID+EA proposes a constellation of low-rise pavilions organized around courtyards, gardens, shaded paths and collective outdoor spaces. The project draws from the spatial logic of traditional African villages, where buildings are arranged to balance community life with privacy, protection and domestic scale. At the heart of the campus, open courtyards and planted areas become places for gathering, play, learning and daily interaction.
The campus is structured around complementary programmes. The orphanage provides a home for children, with dormitories, administrative spaces, a refectory, a health centre, play areas and gardens. The vocational training centre introduces classrooms, computer rooms, polyvalent spaces and workshops dedicated to practical skills such as agriculture, livestock, carpentry, sewing and hairdressing. The football academy extends the project into sport and talent development, with a full-size pitch, training facilities, changing rooms, dormitories, study rooms and dedicated spaces for young athletes, including a women’s football section.
Architecture and landscape are treated as one continuous environment. The buildings are positioned to optimize natural light and ventilation, while generous roof overhangs, shaded walkways and planted courtyards respond to the hot climate of Tambacounda. The use of local materials, earthy tones and protective roofs gives the campus a grounded architectural identity, rooted in place while expressing a contemporary vision of care, education and opportunity.
Beyond accommodation and training, Campus Foot Tambacounda is imagined as a place of reconstruction and empowerment. It offers children not only shelter, but a framework for growth: a home, a school, a field, a garden and a community. Through sport, education, vocational training and daily life, the project transforms architecture into an instrument of protection, dignity and future-building.
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