It is in Toubab Dialaw, a fishing village located 55 km south of Dakar that Gérard Chenet moved to the 70s.

Originally from Haiti where he was born in 1927, Gérard Chenet has lived in Senegal since 1964. Before his arrival, he was also a lawyer, journalist and professor of history of Africa in Guinea Conakry. Writer, architect, director, sculptor and musician, Gérard CHENET was also an adviser to the Ministry of Culture in the early 70s.

He begins by building his house with surrounding materials: stones cut in volcanic rock, salvage marble, stubble, bamboo.

He began to practice flute and sculpture (ebony, basalt and monumental marble blocks). His enthusiasm attracts young people from the region: a workshop of plastic art develops with sculpture and modeling workshops and batik.

At first he receives his friends, his family and artists, then he answers the request of the visitors and, small buildings with turrets and domes, roofs of straw or tiles, covered with terracotta, ceramics, glass paste colored, pink sandstone or flat stones are born. This constantly changing place becomes the Sobo Badé Space (Sobo: voodoo god of the storm, Badé : deity of lightning, mythical appellation linked to sound and light evoking the visual arts), a place of architecture inimitable.

In 1992, Gérard Chenet built an open theater. Courses of traditional African rhythms and dances, choreographic creations, experimental theater performances, batik initiation courses, symposiums of sculpture, ceramics and painting, musical workshops are organized.

 The Sobo Badè Space is recognized today as a place for tourism and culture around the world.

It was in 2000 that Gérard CHENET began to invest a corner of bush, located not far from Sobo Badé, in the hills of Dialaw. This place, which it has named "Engouement" for up to 40 people, is also becoming a major cultural, artistic and ecological center, particularly with the construction of a 750-seat theater. architecture of Greco-Sudano-Sahelian inspiration

and with the realization of an ecological swimming pool with lagoon.