Studio Mozambique: Essential Solutions

One of my favorite projects in my portfolio is this one. We were given a real school that needed help and our designs, if viable, would actually be used to help fix the issues around this elementary school in Chowke Mozambique. The site itself deals with massive amounts of flooding during the rainy season making the entire site unusable.
Within the classroom, there are also issues with the metal roofs absorbing and projecting heat into the classroom space, as well as poor lighting within the space due to no electricity being in use. The CMU walls also cause acoustical issues. So the space deals with being too hot, too dark, and too loud.

In my design, a large goal was to be as minimally invasive as possible, as cost-effective as possible, and use materials that are readily available in Chowke. What I came up with was replacing some of the sheet metal panels with semi-transparent panels to allow light in. Then, between the truss system, a secondary
suspension ceiling comprised of acoustic panels at staggered heights is installed. Doing this allows some of the light into the space and also provides acoustical relief from the reverberations of sound off the CMU walls. This also introduces a double roof system, and by removing some of the CMU bricks along the roof line and turning them, the holes in the CMU allow air to move through, allowing the hot air to circulate out, and keeping the space cooler.

To help mitigate the flooding, we installed French drains, which are very common in the States and very effective while also being low cost and do not cause falling or tripping hazards for the children running around the school. Typically French Drains are created using a fabric that isn’t readily available in Chowke, but the school has a large amount of rice bags which have the same effect of filtering the water of dirt before getting to the drain pipe. The pipe can be easily made with 8in diameter PVC pipe with holes drilled on 8 axis of it allowing water to flow in, and out if clogged.