In Sierra Leone 64% of householder income is spent on food, with limited markets in the area an opportunity arises to harness existing communal cooking practices from a domestic to a commercial entity.

Based in downtown Freetown, Feast on Samba proposes a female-led, community initiative, developed around an existing informal thoroughfare and open drain locally known as 'Samba Gutter’. It provides opportunity for the growth of a plethora of micro-enterprises and community spaces in the Christchurch locality. In a country where traditional gender norms are still prevalent, women assume a domestic role whilst men of craft and commerce.The proposal seeks to challenge this status quo, empowering women towards financial autonomy.

Assembling a range of local sustainable building materials and skills, men focus on a range of timber building, furniture and carpentry enterprises, whilst women focus on catering and entrepreneurship. The collaborative engagement is achieved through a series of domestic-scale, timber-framed market structures, and more civic blockwork kitchens and community halls. The simple, yet robust, architectural arrangement of each structure adapts the local vernacular and existing construction techniques.

The common ground approach of the proposal is highly replicable along the numerous informal routes which proliferate Freetown. The wider scheme could be established as a collective of community halls and markets, creating vibrant pedestrian high streets and places of small-scale commerce; each with their own unique trade network, run by the women of Sierra Leone.