Women's rights: intimate knowledge of the culture and technology of Senegal has enabled young Finnish architects to create a centre intended to empower women in a society where they are normally suppressed.

Rufisque is a port just to the east of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Like most other cities in Africa, it is undergoing traumatic transformation with the impact of modern technology, and a surge of immigration from the countryside. In Rufisque, problems are made more extreme because the sea is eating into the place from the south, so expansion has to take place in the arid land north of the city, and a grey concrete shanty town is growing up there.

Shabby suburban streets are suddenly relieved by an almost strident red building, crisply detailed and well tended. This is the women's centre, a focus for local groups, a reception organization for rural immigrants and a powerhouse for empowering women in a traditionally male orientated culture.

Saija Hollmen, Jenni Reuter and Helena Sandman submitted a proposal for the

centre to the Otaniemi School of Architecture, and the project was developed with the help of the Finnish Foreign Ministry, and Finnish foundations as well as local organizations -- the land was given by the city. * Sociologist Anne Rosenlew co-ordinated cultural interaction. The site is next to the usually dry wadi which runs through the bidonville and hence it was available for (careful) development.

A house under a baobab tree', the centre is modelled on traditional compounds in this part of West Africa, with a strong perimeter surrounding buildings turned inwards to a communal court. The baobab is one of the few trees left in an area that is starved of wood. It shades one of the two principal entrances to the complex, a gateway that leads to the communal hall.

The other public entrance is on the north-west corner of the compound. Here is an attempt to make a small public square, on to which the centre's shop and restaurant open. The attempt is fine -- what's needed is response from the surrounding owners of the grey buildings, who think they cannot afford to give so much as a metre of their land to the public realm.

Once inside the compound, all is clear and (at the moment) Scandinavian neat. A paved court is enclosed by the orderly rhythm of the piers of the communal hail to the right and the workshops on the other side. The red buildings are massively constructed to exploit the thermal flywheel effect. They have wide overhanging roofs to provide shade and are open to allow the maximum amount of natural ventilation. Up the road is the biggest cement factory in West Africa, so the structure is an in-situ concrete frame filled in with concrete blocks, cast and cured on site. Roofs have recycled steel rsj structures, carrying corrugated galvanized metal roofing, with reed matting ceilings so that a void is created between metal and reeds which cools the spaces by convection -- a similar device was used by Finnish architects Heikkinen & Komonen when they worked on the poultry farming school at Koliagbe in Guinea (AR November 2001.

At Rufisque, every effort has been made to reduce use of wood -- the region's most precious natural resource. Not only are the doors and windows made of steel, but the reinforcing bars of the in-situ structure are of the recycled metal. Ventilation is often achieved by using wheel hubs from clapped-out vehicles as protective grilles. Bottle bottoms sometimes make windows, though these are usually just openings shielded at night by steel shutters. The craft centre is largely open between its piers to allow the poisonous gases of the dying processes to be dissipated.

The rhythm of its open colonnade is echoed in that of the hall across the court. Here is dignified and noble public architecture created with few means, and a building which may have a profound effect on the society for which it has been made.

* The NGO project was carried out through the Tekniska Foreigning Finland.