Museum and open gallery (The stone house Hidmo)

mekelle university

Project idea

This vernacular looking modern Museum and open gallery is designed by me , which particularly aim to describe the basic feature of the traditional house making of the northern Ethiopia , the projected is suited at the mountain peak of the northern Ethiopia , the project describes both the fascinating housing typology and what it finally lead us to use it for such story telling Museum and Open gallery design.

Project description

project location?

this region is the most visited historical place ever in the country . which basically attracts tourists to visit those remarkable house types called (Hidmo) and also rock hewn monolithic churches.

The museum compound and the open air gallery will serve to tell and display historical artifacts and photos to be very explanatory for any tourists or visitors to this mountainous site.

so that the compound is both going to serve as a Museum and an open air gallery for visitorors at the end of the day.

what Is Hidmo?

Hidom is not only an important structure, but it is rather an architectural style and movement for a thousands years with little change. Hidmo construction expressed typically by Fish-bone shaped flat roof made of timer ceiling, mud and slate (as eave) and the name is literally linked with a flat roof and act as a general name for Tigria vernacular architecture
(stone house) and the ‘hidmo housing style’ has a standard architecture through the region and expressed by the stone building material and ‘Monkey head construction techniques.’

Vernacular architecture of Tigrai, northern Ethiopia, mostly related to the stone housing construction. Traditional dwellings and their method of construction was certainly worth to note here because the construction systems of the Tigrian vernacular houses were more than a thousands years old with not much change and still in use in the rural areas.

The main livable space of dwellers is accompanied of three architectural elements: flat roof or hidmo, stone wall, earthen floor and all components such as wooden doors, small windows and mud made furniture. The main hidmo house includes one story and sometimes two story house has inside two adjacent spaces

design layout/inspiration?

Hidmo is a substantial structure with a simple unit rectangular in plain and flat roofed dwelling and mostly known and considered as an architectural style made-up from the abundant stone, mud, tree ranches, timber/wood, soil/earth and slate.

in addition here , i tried to make the museum as sustainable as possible , since we have so much of limitation , i tried to address water conservation , heat conservation , co2 emission free as possible.

see attachments for further please.

Technical information

The Hidmo rectangular unit varies its size and dimension because of many reasons. The ceiling height for the main living room (medribet) is around 3.60 meters, and the height of the one floor mass from the ground to the roof level is approximately 3.20 meters, in varying sizes between 3.00
and 4.00 meters. In general the basic architectural elements of the hidmo dwelling are classified as flat roof, afgebela/gebela, entrance, chimney, small window openings, functional room, courtyard and thick wall. The shape, dimension and place of these features in the overall design
are determined by four basic factors such as availability of construction materials, social-economy/class, climate and function.

The museum is fully constructed through stone which is the most abundant building material in this region and very skilled man powers also available on such stone construction.

see attachments for further please.

Co-authors

Ass.Prof Samuel Bekele Jetie