LIMBE ENVIRONMENTAL HOUSE

Project idea

Cameroon, despite its exceptional biodiversity, faces a progressive degradation of its ecosystems due to urbanization, intensive agriculture and a lack of environmental awareness. In the city of Limbe, the historic Botanical Garden has gradually lost its educational role, its function reduced mainly to tourism, while the preservation of local plant heritage becomes an increasingly urgent issue.
The idea of this project is to respond to this loss by designing an Environmental House: an architecture capable of reconnecting the population with their natural environment while integrating harmoniously with the Botanical Garden site. The reflection is grounded in the study of comparable international case studies, a close reading of the local context, and the ambition to create an immersive, interactive and accessible space. Through this project, architecture becomes a tool for environmental mediation, able to teach, raise awareness and reconnect users with the richness of Cameroonian flora.

Project description

Built on a 1,500 m² plot adjoining Limbe's historic Botanical Garden, the Limbe Environmental House is organized around a central circulation core distributing four functional zones: a pedagogical zone (pedagogical greenhouse, exhibition hall, multipurpose room), a technical zone (maintenance, storage, workshop room, sanitary block), an administrative zone (management office, sanitary block) and a reception and services zone (reception desk, boutique-café, terrace).
The composition wraps around a central courtyard that separates public access, staff access and emergency access, with dedicated pedestrian and vehicle circulation, two-wheeler and car parking, and green buffers along the street to limit noise nuisance and respond to the dominant wind and solar orientation of the site. The pedagogical greenhouse, a curved, fully glazed volume topped by a photovoltaic roof, forms the project's centerpiece: a living exhibit that visitors physically walk through, discovering Cameroon's plant diversity through a vertical planted wall, immersive planted paths and an overlooking mezzanine, rather than observing it from a distance.

Technical information

The building combines a reinforced-concrete structure for the administrative and service wings with a lightweight steel-and-timber roof structure for the greenhouse and exhibition volumes. The greenhouse envelope is a curved steel/aluminum frame glazed with glass panels, carried by IPE steel beams, metal purlins and timber roof trusses resting on an aluminum eave frame; rainwater is collected through metal gutters and downpipes integrated into the roof geometry, with a 2% slope directing runoff toward the drainage points, and expansion joints separating structurally independent blocks.
The roof of the main volume is fitted with photovoltaic panels for on-site energy production, while aluminum sheet roofing (bac alu) covers the remaining volumes, with plaster and insulation detailing at the eaves, ridge and truss-to-beam connections. Reinforced-concrete slabs form the ground floor. The environmental performance of the building relies on passive design strategies: natural cross and stack ventilation through the greenhouse, thermal inertia from the ground, a humid tropical microclimate generated by dense planting and evapotranspiration, and absorbent vegetated surfaces that regulate indoor temperature and humidity without mechanical cooling.

Documentation

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