Green City Kigali Scoops WAF Future Project Masterplan Award.
By Caroline Ameh
Green City Kigali, a masterplan for the sustainable and inclusive expansion of urban Kigali has won the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Future Project Masterplan Award.
The award was announced on Thursday, November 30, at WAF 2023 held at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore from November 29 to December 1.
The ground-breaking project, the first of its kind in Africa, was commissioned by the Rwanda Green Fund and KfW, Germany’s main development bank, and will serve as a model for sustainable urban development that can be replicated across Rwanda and the wider region.
Simon Doody, the project lead designer, said: “The award recognizes the need to start planning carefully now, to address the very pressing future issues of population growth in Africa and the potential issues of rapid urbanization and the carbon impact that will have.”
Designed and submitted for competition by British architectural firm, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Green City Kigali, will help to address critical urbanization challenges in the City of Kigali by creating new paradigms with innovative, sustainable, affordable, climate change resilient and place-specific urban models.
The 600-hectare city extension is expected to create homes for up to 160,000 people, in a development defined through a series of mixed-use communities embedded with employment opportunities, schools, community buildings, commercial buildings, sports and play space, peri-urban agricultural areas and important green-blue social networks.
Using the development as a green catalyst for economic development in Rwanda, it will integrate passive low-energy and low-embodied energy buildings and infrastructure, nature-based solutions, efficient and renewable energy, recycling and inclusive living as well as homegrown solutions and local construction materials.
According to the Rwanda Green Fund, the project, currently under discussion at the grassroots level, as part of the validation process, is at the vanguard of urban planning.
The project will be submitted for approval to the Council of the City of Kigali early next year.
