This summer, I was in contact with our professor John Ochsendorf from the building technology dept. In our discussion about possible undergraduate thesis topics, he helped me find one that was just what I was looking for:
1. SMALL scale design project: bigger than a sofa, smaller than an office building.
2. FEASIBLE: One aspect I did not like about thesis and school design projects in general was the fact that I know many of them are not realistic, I always wanted to have the feeling that I would be able to build something after designing it.
3. Incorporates BUILDING TECHNOLOGY: I wanted to design something that used daylighting, ventilation, structure, etc. to its advantage and actually "crunch" some numbers and test out the effectiveness of my design.
The project that I have agreed to work in is in the design of several schools in Sierra Leone.
I will be working directly with Jon Bart, the founder of Village Hope, the foundation that is organizing the project.
Right now they have been building the schools as four simple concrete walls and metal roof. These methods are not only expensive, they are bad teaching environments as well.
Can good design lower the cost of these schools considerably while improving the quality of the spaces for the purpose of teaching?
Things to think about:
- Local resources, materials, and crafts
- Earth construction (rammed earth, mud bricks, etc.)
- Different school designs
- Rainfall (heavy rainfall problems in this region)
We plan to travel to Sierra Leone in January along with a group of professors (and possibly students?) to begin construction in one of the schools, the design will be very simple and basic, it will serve to test the feasibility of the construction method (how long it takes to build it, how much work, how well it stands the rainfall, how much was saved in cost?)
