Design – School

Improving Design – the Cool School

Every project gives us an opportunity to improve on design – but always with the principles of sustainability in mind:

• Comfortable building: cool, light, airy
• Maximum use of local raw materials
• Maximum use of local labour
• Low impact building in terms of:
  1. energy required to produce and transport building materials
  2. use of renewable materials
  3. impact of building on the local environment
  4. running costs
• A low maintenance building that a rural community can easily look after
• Design sensitive to Zambia’s cultural heritage

We are always conscious of affordable solutions and our first design, affectionately known as our Cool School was developed by David Bwalye Architects (Zambia) on the basis of a workshop with women from a co-operative in Chongwe. Why cool? Because the tiles and soil blocks make the classroom much much cooler than using tin roofing.

The first classrooms were started in 2008 at Butempa and by early 2010 nine classrooms will have been commissioned, with design improvements being made along the way.

In 2009, we teamed up with the Zambia Institute of Architects to ran a national competition to design a low-cost primary school applying the principles of sustainable architecture. The winner was Andrew Phiri who enjoyed a study tour to the UK as his prize.