Organic gardens form the basis of a robust permaculture program that will offer food to staff and guests, while fostering opportunities for continued research into water preservation practices within local plant cultivation.

Moving away from our developed dependency on electricity as the primary source of power within the kitchen, this traditional outdoor kitchen offers space to explore new practices of food preparation while also preserving and revitalizing knowledge of pre-colonial recipes and techniques that have continued to disappear in favor of fast-food alternatives.

Revisiting open ground as the original sprung floor ideally used by dancers, this large, shaded expanse offers an opportunity to explore choreography in connection to the earth, and to remember how modern technologies attempt to mimic natural environments within human-built landscapes. tsikapasi will be the primary creative base for nora chipaumire’s team, offering a permanent home for nora that promotes the company’s research and support of Black African female practices and processes, including nhaka and related movement canons.

One room on the compound is dedicated to visiting artists, prioritizing those who have a specific interest in developing bodies of work generated from within the global south. The residency will offer space for reflection and serious study to established thinkers and ambitious creators.

A newly-built state-of-the-art sound studio will feature technologies for recording and producing, accompanied by master classes teaching local students both acoustically-oriented artistic practices and technical production skills. The studio will be made available-for-hire to local professionals in acoustic production and will double as a local hub for Harare-based alternative radio programming.

Libraries offer the opportunity for scholarship while archives preserve and share cultural memory. The mhayiyo research archives and library will be home to these two separate and parallel practices. Physical access to books, records, and a study corner will come together with a digitally-hosted sound archive composed largely of oral histories, creating the framework for new access to a non-urban knowledge base focused on locally sourced and generated materials. The library and archives will include the full compilation of nora’s research and past works.

A series of wooden benches will be distributed throughout the property to allow for moments of stillness and reflection throughout the yard.