Sharon Davis, the founder, and principal of Sharon Davis Design is a highly valued and award-winning architect and designer who strongly believes that design has the power to transform.
Starting her career in finance, she shifted her practice to pursue architecture with a focus on sustainability and humanitarian causes. In 2007, she established Sharon Davis Design, a collaborative design practice that celebrates architecture that supports women’s rights, social justice, economic empowerment, and sustainability.
Here is a list of 10 Projects by Sharon Davis Design:
1. Bayalpata Hospital – Achham, Nepal
Achham, Nepal is one of the country’s poorest and most remote regions in need of affordable and accessible healthcare. The Bayalpata Hospital designed by Sharon Davis Design is set on a hilltop covering 45,500 square feet of space on the slopes of the Seti River Valley.
The hospital was constructed using locally available rammed earth material and low tech construction which made the design cost-efficient. The hospital includes five medical buildings that cater to six districts surrounding Achham. The vernacular architecture is characterized by gabled roofs, setbacks, landscaped courtyards, and passive design.
2. Women’s Opportunity Center – Kayonza, Rwanda
The Women’s Opportunity Center located in eastern Rwanda celebrated women empowerment through the community’s agricultural economy.
The facility is designed in collaboration with Women for Women International and is a community of seventeen perforated brick pavilions with a plaza where students sell handcrafted items made on-site such as food, textiles, and baskets among others. The students also made the bricks, using clay from the site, which was used for constructing the structure.
3. Rwandan Share Houses – Rwinkwavu, Rwanda
The Share Houses are meant for medical professionals from Partners In Health (PIH) and Rwanda’s Ministry of Health who attend the Rwinkwavu Hospital in rural Rwanda. Located on a hillside, the 6,900 square foot housing comprises two single-story dormitories of eight bedrooms each.
The materials used for the construction of the dormitories included handmade bricks, local stone, hand-woven eucalyptus, and clay tiles. The project was made in collaboration with Rwanda Village Enterprises and designed by Sharon Davis Design.
4. Affordable Earth Housing – Rwinkwavu, Rwanda
Sharon Davis Design designed a prototype for a single-family home that is affordable, environmentally conscious, and sustainable that promotes safe and healthy living, community enhancement, and economic growth.
The prototype costs $10,000 to build using local and handmade materials and also features environmental design features. Passive ventilation, natural daylighting systems, and sustainable waste management are key features of these prototypes.
5. Guard House – Rwinkwavu, Rwanda
The Guard House designed by Sharon Davis Design in 2015, was a part of an experimental housing development for Rwanda Village Enterprises. The goal was to try construction using earth-based materials that can be easily replicated in the rural area of Rwinkwavu. The Guard House design precedes the Affordable Earth Housing.
Along with the assembly and construction, the residents of the village also engaged in the production of earth blocks to construct walls. This also helped in providing jobs for the locals.
6. Kosovo Women’s Center – Prishtina, Kosovo
The Kosovo Women’s Center was made in partnership with Women for Women International, which empowers women who suffer from post-war trauma by helping them develop job skills. The women’s center is a three-story, 11,750 square foot building that comprises educational, training, administrative, and assembly spaces.
The public spaces are characterized by clear glazing that wraps around the base thus inviting people to learn more about the mission and its values.
7. Garrison House – Garrison, New York
The house constructed in Garrison, New York is a 1,900 square foot contemporary residence designed by Sharon Davis Design. The South-East facade of the house is wrapped in salvaged Douglas fir, and has a traditional pitched roof whereas the opposite facade features fully retractable sliding doors that connect the outdoors to the indoor space.
The interiors feature skillful millwork, recycled and reclaimed local materials as well as sustainable sourcing and ventilation systems.
8. Garrison Tree House – Garrison, New York
The treehouse designed by Sharon Davis Design is a multipurpose space that sits on four tubular steel pipes atop a hillside meadow. The interior spaces are covered in a weather-resistant polycarbonate and the exterior is clad in a reclaimed white cedar and is accessible by a handmade rope climbing net.
The 350 square foot project has sweeping views of the Hudson River Valley, and has ample lounging spaces to celebrate the views from the tree canopy level.
9. Wiconi Community – Pine Ridge, South Dakota
The on-going project at Wiconi Community is a sustainable and affordable housing community by elder Henry Red Cloud for the Oglala Lakota, a Native American tribe residing in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. All the buildings are designed to be powered by locally made solar panels, compressed earth blocks from local soils, and will be zero-energy.
A proposed on-site food production marketplace will empower the local community. The buildings are designed to harvest heat from solar gain to reduce the need for mechanical heating and will be powered by renewable energy collected via solar panels above all the buildings in the Wiconi Community.
10. Gowanus Lowline – Brooklyn, New York
The Gowanus Lowline is a proposal by Sharon Davis Design to use the infrastructure potential of the Gowanus Canal that runs through Brooklyn. The canal, currently being polluted by industrial waste, borders the Red Hook, Carroll Gardens, and the Park Slope neighborhoods among others.
The proposal by Davis’s firm asked, “Can you spark bold transformation by simply connecting dead-end streets across the Gowanus Canal?” It focuses on enhanced pedestrian activity to stitch the neighborhoods together with the environment.
