sketching

Another cold and windy London evening, another (very nice) architecture office and an abundant supplies of cookies….it’s a tough job!
Tonight was a smaller group then last time, so after going through our findings we could even have a go at some first sketches.

Matt came with some great books:
Koenigsberger. O.H. et al. (1973) - Manual of Tropical Housing and Building: Part 1 Climatic Design, Longman, London, UK
Roland Stulz and Kiran Mukerji (1993) - Appropriate Building Materials: A catalogue of potential solutions (Third Revised Edition). ITDG Publishing
Paul Oliver (ed.) - The Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, Cambridge University Press
and a load of information such as the right window percentage (20%), building on the east-west axis, no openings on the west side, a outside space on the north in wintertime and on the shaded south side in the summer, a rainfall of 800 mm. (London has an annual rainfall of 750 mm.) and the fact that the sun is much stronger at this latitude.

The main design issues at this stage were the need to locate the security guard next to the lockable computer room and to the car park.
As for the layout, we came up with the idea to incorporate an amphitheatre and a café.
We made some sketches, which all lead to the idea of dividing the large area into smaller sections: a road as a spine through the middle of the plot, on one side a café that would also be connected to the public area on the north side of the schoolsite. On the other side of the road would be the classrooms, and more to the south the library. This library would be in the quietest area and near to the existing secondary school.

As for the architecture; we are thinking about a small structure, to initiate the first three classrooms, with the prospect of replicating this configuration in the future as the school gets larger.

A lot of enthousiasts!

Today was a very busy meeting. Not only was our own group complete, but Engida brought a colleague along and Elfneh from Ahead attended this meeting as well.
This meant a lot of talking about the exact brief and the location in Ethiopia.
For most of us Ethiopia was not much more than another country in Africa. But when you’re designing a school you better find out everything you need to know about the exact location and the limitations and possibilities for the design.

Shakiso is a town with a population of about 3,000 people. There is one secondary school and several primary schools. The distance to Addis Ababa (the capital of Ethiopia) is about 500 km. but the nearest tarmac road is not nearer than 200 km. from Shakiso, final stretch of the road to the town is a gravel road. At 100 km. are two other larger towns. These facts have a great influence on the use of materials for the school. Most likely we will be confined to concrete blocks and corrugated steel roofs.

Ahead has been given the opportunity to use a large site for the new school. We can put our initial three classrooms on a sloping plot of 300 x 400 m. On the east side of this plot is the secondary school, and it would be a good idea to share some of our facilities with that school.
The site is located at the edge of the town, without public transport to it.
One of the ideas would be to provide local street children with horses and carts to get means of transport to the school.
The area around the school should be secured and we should be aware of termites, mosquitoes and monkeys!

Other local conditions that we, European based, architects need to be aware of are floods, although it doesn’t rain much, when it rains it pours. The rainy season is in the spring and summer months (February till June and July till September). During those seasons the wind is from east to west, and in the dry season from north to south.
When it’s dry the days are hot and the nights are cold, in the rainy season the temperatures tend to be more modest.

The school will start as a small project with a minimal of three classrooms. But the ambitions are much larger. Being a school for adult learning, it would be great to use the actual building process as a learning experience. When the school is running, it should soon start getting larger, with more classes to be taught. Around the school can be a vegetable garden and some livestock, as part of the classes.
Also, this school can become an example project for other similar schools.

We concluded the evening with again another list of questions, we need to know much more about the location (so anyone who could help us with information about Shakiso, or even better, anyone in that area, please contact us at info@afhuk.org), and in the next weeks we will try to find out about the climate, vernacular architecture, sanitary provisions, solar panels and rainwater storage.