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.