Pierre Goudiaby Atepa

Pierre Goudiaby Atepa , born with Yawned (Casamance) in 1947, is an engineer-architect Senegalese, certainly most known in its country like with the international scales.

Biography

It was born on June 30th, 1947 in Baïla, a small village casamançais located at the north of Ziguinchor, within the community of the Diola S Fogny. " Goudiaby" is a patronym characteristic of the language diola and Atepa would mean " the bâtisseur" , a name which the architect will give to his company and which it puts readily ahead for itself from now on. As much of members of this ethnos group, he declares Christian practitioner. He is father of five girls today.

Of stock diola, it however grew with Dakar, more precisely with Medina, street 7, then in Rebeuss, of the districts of the capital. Wire of trader, it is initially tried by the theater, but after scientific studies with the College Blaise Diagne of Dakar, it chooses architecture finally and leaves to make its studies with New York. Thanks to a purse, it integrates a considered private university, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Initially it takes down a diploma for the occupation of engineer in sciences of construction, then supplements its formation by a diploma of architecture. Its thesis of end of studies would have had as a title the African ideal City .

After some first very noticed achievements, it creates its own cabinet in 1977, and in 1985 it founds Atepa Technologies, a company of technical, financial and real engineering.

Thereafter it installs offices in many African countries: Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Togo, Mauritania, Chad, Democratic republic of Congo or Burkina Faso. In 2006 a Atepa Space opens on the Champs Elysées with Paris. Others are in project in New York and Tokyo.

Pierre Goudiaby Atepa is, or was, President about the architects of Senegal and the Union of the architects of Africa, also member of the international Academy of architecture.

Very near to Abdoulaye Wade, he is the special adviser of the President of the Republic as regards architecture, “artist official of the Sun king”, point out the adversaries of Me Wade, who criticize a policy of great work very expensive for public finances.

Concerned about the fate of Casamance, he is the president of the Collective of the executives casamançais.

Achievements

Its first construction significant is the seat of BCEAO (Central bank of the States of West Africa) in 1975. By its height and its majestic silhouette, the tower would evoke the ancestral and crowned tree of Casamance, the Fromager. Other sources lean for the Baobab, symbol of Senegal, but also of the solidity and the stability of CFA franc. In fact, the most building of Dakar to date was reproduced on the old cuts of 10.000 francs CFA - demonetized in 2003 - and thus very familiar to the Africans of the West. Atepa did not carry out the agencies of the BCEAO in Dakar and in Ziguinchor, it is Sheik Ngom who built them. As opposed to what one thinks, it did not carry out them, it was in the cabinet of Mr. Ngom, and it is the latter which supervised work of design and framed the cabinet.
In 1999, when the Heads of State of central Africa meet for the Sommet of Malabo , the capital of the Guinea Equatoriale, it carries out in particular a great center of conferences of 600 places and sixteen presidential villas.
the international airport of Banjul in Gambia, a such large white bird ready with the take-off, wants to be a symbol of freedom, peace and of balance, resolutely turned towards the development.

Monumental, the seat of CEDEAO (Economic community of the States of West Africa with Lome (Togo) is coomposé of two buildings connected by a bridge which symbolizes the bond between the 16 Member States. A building of 13 floors takes itself support on 16 elements which constitute the basic structure. It is dedicated to the African woman, represented by a sculpture of three meters scale. The rotunda of the conference room suggests a turned over water-bottle and a water point points out this essential component in Africa.
the Pyramides - a truncated pyramid - shelter the workspace of the Master and his cabinet.
Among the other achievements, still let us quote the the Alliance Fran1caise of Ziguinchor, inspired by the local habitat, the City of the Teachers in Dakar, the University of business management, the agency of the General society of bank in the industrial park in Dakar and especially the Porte of the Third millennium, inaugurated in 2001 on the large cornice of Dakar, vis-a-vis the ocean.

Projects in progress

As much of talented visionaries, Pierre Goudiaby Atepa allures the ones and irritates the others.

Many projects are being studied, all will not be carried out, but this list testifies to the ambitions and the vitality of a team: the University of the Future African, the City Ker Gorgui, the Large Mosque Sheik Amadou Bamba, a great stage with the Middle-East, Cyber Village, the Ministerial City of Guinea Equatoriale, the building of ICAO in Guinea Equatoriale, a Monument of the African Rebirth on the culminating point of Dakar, a room of banquets or of the hotels of prestige.

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