A new educational landmark in Dakar

We have just completed in Dakar the new campus of the Institut Supérieur de Management, a next-generation university facility designed to accommodate more than 3,000 students within a living environment that is both protected and open to the city. We have envisioned this campus as far more than a simple collection of classrooms: it is a manifesto project that asserts the ability of architecture to transmit knowledge, structure a community and narrate a vision of contemporary Africa. Conceived from the outset as a pedagogical tool, the building becomes a third educator alongside teachers and students, staging movement, uses and climate.

At the heart of the project, we drew on the figure of the palaver tree, a traditional place of gathering, listening and transmission, a true school before school. This symbol enabled us to organize the entire campus around a vibrant core of life, where words circulate freely and disciplines intersect. The main façade thus becomes the true stage of the project, an inhabited frontage that brings together meeting spaces, circulation routes, terraces and informal pauses, in the manner of a vertical educational village. By working this metaphor into the built form, we anchor the campus in a powerful cultural continuity while projecting it into a contemporary architectural language.

Faced with a narrow and highly constrained urban site, we chose verticality as both an architectural and pedagogical response. Rather than spreading the programme horizontally, we stacked the functions and created terraces at every level, which become contemporary extensions of the palaver tree, suspended above the city. These outdoor, sheltered and shaded spaces host relaxation, study, informal discussions and events, transforming the campus into a true educational village in the sky. Circulation between classrooms is now vertical, generating new meeting places, intersecting views over Dakar and a spatial experience that accompanies students throughout their day.​

The climate of Dakar, characterised by intense sunlight, was a major driver of the design. The volumetry was shaped to limit the most exposed façades and generate large shaded terraces that act as horizontal sun breakers. A protective exoskeleton, integrating vertical terracotta screens and a rooftop canopy, completes this system to significantly reduce solar gain on the envelope. Thanks to this approach, direct solar input is drastically reduced and optimal thermal comfort is achieved without extensive reliance on air conditioning in the common areas. Natural ventilation, facilitated by cross-cutting circulation routes and open spaces, becomes an essential component of the project, legible to all and understood by students as a full-scale lesson in sustainability.

Through its height, vertical silhouette and deep façades, the ISM Dakar campus stands out as a new landmark in the urban landscape of the Senegalese capital. By day, it punctuates the skyline and asserts the school’s identity within the city; by night, it glows like a lantern, a symbol of knowledge, vigilance and openness, visible from afar. We wanted this architecture, deeply rooted in its context and proud of its origins, to embody a vision of African education that is bold, inventive and outward-looking. This ambition resonates beyond borders: the project is showcased in the international magazine The Plan, which features it on the cover of its issue 165, recognising the ISM Dakar campus as an emerging reference in educational and bioclimatic architecture.