Scifr

The Botswana Innovation Hub is designed to throw start-ups, global corporations, and research and health organizations under one massive green roof stretched long and low over part of a 57-hectare site of barren veldt in the capital city of Gaborone. The design is a clutch of lean volumes reminiscent of sand dunes that link via bridges to create an intimate community (or as intimate as you can get in 270,000 square feet). A raft of green technologies, from rain water collectors to photovoltaic cells, will help the building achieve LEED certification, a first in Botswana. This is sexy stuff — sexy enough, the hope goes, to attract outsiders to what’s effectively the middle of corporate-nowhere.

And the rhetoric here is irresistible to the West: A nation rich in natural, but ultimately limited, resources wants to convert to a knowledge-based economy and uses starchitecture, that evergreen symbol of institutional greatness, to literally cultivate its ambitions. The question, of course, is whether it’ll work — or just end up a white elephant like some other places we’ve heard about nearby.

(via peopleofthesouth)

6 notes

1. e1ectricfeel liked this
2. scifr reblogged this from peopleofthesouth
3. thisisjamesj reblogged this from peopleofthesouth
4. daftmongrel liked this
5. thisisjamesj liked this
6. peopleofthesouth posted this