The project entails an extension of anganwadi or pre-primary school situated in a village near Gir forest, Gujarat. The design required multipurpose room as a classroom, reading space or lunch room. It is designed using local materials and labour for construction. All materials and skills for construction are procured from within a 3km radius of the site. Th building is designed to use stones from around the site, materials like clay tiles made from the village potter, panels from the weavers and local fabricators and other recyclable waste. The Wardha clay-tile roof is introduced not only to keep the building cool during harsh summer months, but also for it to behave as a cheap repeatable module for the village. The building is thus designed as a prototype for the village to adopt from.
After the design phase, execution was carried out as a 'hands-on' exercise involving the Compartment S4 team, participants from different fields and the locals. For constructing the clay tile roof, a skilled mason was also present on site to supervise construction, to ensure that a precise construction technique was being passed on to the local masons, for the future. This synergy while construction brought in a wave of awareness within the village, accelerating seepage of construction knowledge between skilled masons from different places to local masons to participants to our design team and to the rest of the village.
View details of the project on this link
View project book on this link.
