Centre d'Accueil des Orphelins - Campus Foot

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 in three complementary phases. The first phase provides a home for 40 children, with separate dormitories for girls and boys, administrative spaces, a refectory, a health centre, play areas and gardens. The second phase introduces a vocational training centre for young people aged 14 to 18, with classrooms, computer rooms, polyvalent spaces and workshops dedicated to skills such as agriculture, livestock, carpentry, sewing, and hairdressing. The third phase extends the programme into a football academy, with a full-size pitch, training facilities, changing rooms, dormitories, study rooms, a trophy room and spaces dedicated to the development of young talent, 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, 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.