Titolo BLOCKED
Typology COMPETITION Let’s build my school
Year 2021
Project site Senegal
While working in Italy, i started investigating issues of architecture in development, as tools for equity and democracy. As an exercise, I elaborated two proposal for international competitions, one for a drug distribution centre in an emergency context and the second for a primary school in Senegal. I became even more passionate about designing in less familiar, complex, unpredictable contexts, keeping recycling, valorizing local material, and adaptable solution as key principle of my design.
The BLOCKED project creates a school that is built with techniques based on local materials and knowledge, developing them and expressing their full potential to create spaces and buildings that adapt to the climate of the place, respecting and reflecting the traditions and needs of the local community.
Thanks to the construction and use of a CETA-Ram block press, compressed earth bricks are created, with which all the buildings on the lot will be built. The CETA-Ram press is an easy construction tool and its use does not require specific skills. Through an in-depth study of this technology, three modules are created for three different types of self-locking bricks. Thanks to these bricks, construction times are reduced and the construction itself is simplified. The design and knowledge of how to manufacture the block press, as well as the presses used during construction, will be left to the local community, who will be able to familiarise themselves with and fully assimilate this technology, which improves and develops the rammed earth construction technique that has always characterised these places.
Rammed earth compressed bricks have excellent mechanical and energy performance and with the creation of double masonry the interior spaces are more isolated and adapt better to the local climate. Following the criteria of bioclimatic design, large windows are also inserted to guarantee correct air recirculation and a bamboo filter screens the classrooms and internal spaces, since the metal roof is raised to help contain the temperatures of the internal spaces, through the use of trusses made using the metal profiles most commonly used locally and exploiting the great manual skill of local workers.
The tilting wooden benches that are installed in correspondence with the windows of the school’s classrooms, make the indoor and outdoor spaces transformable and multifunctional with a solution that has low economic costs but that moves and brings life to all the spaces. Aware of the importance that the spaces outside the buildings have in the local culture, a large space for recreation and aggregation is created around the large tree and the empty spaces between the classrooms are vitalised and used to the full, contributing as much as the classrooms to the daily life of the whole school and those who use it.