Ah Yone Oo, Irrawaddy Flower Garden and New Day School: Prelude to Next Issue

The first quarter issue of 2025 of FuturArc aims to look deeper into Green, sustainable educational projects that may not be your regular classroom-type set-up or cookie-cutter schools. We hope to explore spaces that attempt to allow learners to discover knowledge in more hands-on, immersive settings that are not apart from Nature. As a prelude of what is to come, Jan Glasmeier of Simple Architecture shares, in his own words, what he and his team are doing to revive a ‘forgotten’ way of designing and building for a marginalised community, and what students of architecture could learn by doing.

AH YONE OO, IRRAWADDY FLOWER GARDEN AND NEW DAY SCHOOL

Every year Simple Architecture completes the construction of new classrooms for a Migrant Learning Centre (MLC) in the Thai border town of Mae Sot. The project duration usually takes about five to six weeks. Within this period, we are able to complete between two to four classrooms.

Ah Yone Oo and New Day School are two of the projects that Simple Architecture was able to complete within a short time frame. Approximately 64 MLCs in the Tak province have seen a large increase in student numbers since the military coup in Myanmar on 1 February 2021. Up to 40 students had to share a space of just 20 square metres.

Prior to starting the design process, we were committed to see that the project meets the needs and aligns to long-term sustainability goals of the school community. We hired workers with different skillsets from the local community. During the construction process we exchanged knowledge of local building techniques that resulted in a more eloquent skillset for all parties. The projects are seamlessly integrated into the surroundings by placing them between shading tamarind trees or arranging them in a way that they overlook the mountains along the border.

Selected by climatic properties, availability, ecological footprint and social factors, adobe bricks and local second-hand timber are the two main material sources for the school construction. Soil originated on-site has a sufficient clay content. By mixing it with locally available rice husk we are able to produce around 400 earthen bricks per day. The process is highly replicable and the technique of making earthen bricks and using them as a construction material is simple.

[This is an excerpt. Subscribe to the digital edition or hardcopy to read the complete article.]

PROJECT DATA

Read more stories from FuturArc 4Q 2024: Tempering Temperatures!