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Tesseract Humanitarian Architecture

During the summer of 2010 a group of students from Aberdeen’s Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and Built Environment embarked on a trip to India with a view to helping out a local charity with some ideas. In the event they ended up designing a new school building.

Architecture student David Fleck (21), from Edinburgh, first became involved with the Delhi charity, Anusaran, three years ago, when he spent six months teaching and helping in the schools and the small local church. The charity is run entirely by local couple, John and Abha, and David has remained in close contact with them since then.

Intending to support the charity by providing some building design expertise, David flew out to Delhi to begin work on the project, with fellow third year classmates Lewis Kane (20), from Inverness, Stuart Binnie (19), from Aberdeen, Alasdair Johnstone (20), from Glasgow, Hedieh Ghodsi (21), from Aberdeen and Johanna Grill (23), from Stockholm, Sweden.

During their three weeks in India, the group researched the local area and developed a brief and vision for the school project with the charity. They also ran focus groups and workshops with women and children at the existing school culminating in a set of plans for a new school, which were subsequently passed. Some preparation work on the site and the proposed school building has already begun.

David Fleck took time out from his studies to speak exclusively to www.scottisharchitecture.com about the Delhi project and his hopes for its future development.

David Fleck (second from left)

Background

“I’d been to India before. I travelled there in 2007 after I left school and ended up working in this school in Delhi – run by an organization called Anusaran - for around 6 months.

The school (which has around 200 pupils) is completely overcrowded. It’s a small place and they’re always struggling with money, and the staff has to just muddle along, but it’s a great vibrant atmosphere and the kids are full of energy. I had forged a friendship with a great couple called John and Abha, who run the school, and they have this great vision to provide more for the children.

Initial idea for the project

The idea for the project came about last year at Uni. I was thinking about what I could do for a student project. It didn’t occur to me at first, but then it hit me that this project could be a stark contrast to what I normally do as an architecture student.

In terms of our initial thoughts, this was a bit nebulous, but then I got in touch with John and Abha in India. They were very keen on the idea so we ran with it. As we left to go to India we still weren’t sure what level of responsibility we’d be given. We were just hoping that with the grand vision for a new school, which the owners had in mind, we might be able to provide some creative background, rather than having them end up with something builderly and basic. We were extremely happy to have that level of input. But when we got out there and got chatting to John and Abha, they basically handed the whole project to us. We were surprised. We were in at the deep end!

Design process

It all happened very quickly. Our final design was almost our first idea.

We were only in India for three weeks, so it was quite intense. We started off in the first week getting to know what John and Abha had in mind and going to some lessons in the school to understand a bit more about the school.

We then went into separate rooms with sketch pads for half an hour and sketched wildly to come up with some ideas. We got together one evening and slotted the first design together. It wasn’t perfect first time, but it kind of worked, and John and Abba were overjoyed. We had our laptops so then set about making a 3D model and presented a walk-through, and they were just astounded by it.

At first John and Abha didn’t want to criticize our design, but then that quickly changed, and they became more confident in discussions about where we might have gone wrong or misunderstood what they wanted, and this was really invaluable to us. They hadn’t been exactly sure about what they needed to achieve in terms of their vision, so we sat down for a while and talked about what we could do and between us we prepared a five-page brief. We were a bit worried about running away with ourselves, so we tried to keep it all about their needs.

Following our discussions and having made a number of refinements to the final design, we prepared an initial set of drawings and met with the contractor, who they were able to give us advice about electrics and plumbing. We don’t have to deal with these things when we’re still at Uni! Contractors and engineers looked over the plans and signed them off.

So we left John and Abha with basic plans and sections and electrical / plumbing schemes. We wanted to leave them with something tangible, as they’ve had so many volunteers in the past making wild promises, and then going home and getting distracted by life. We were keen not to do that.

Final Design Concept

What really drove the final design were environmental conditions. We’re not incredibly experienced in terms of India’s climate, but our main idea was to keep the buiding naturally ventilated and cool in the heat. There are two main functions of the building: there’s a women’s empowerment project, so we have provided accommodation for women in the area who are experiencing difficult times; and then there’s spaces for the kids. Our main drive was to connect these two areas, focusing on the idea of establishing a community, to create a family feeling in a fun space.

Current development

At the moment we’re currently raising a lot of money. We’re trying to raise £65k, which is a lot to raise if you don’t have a fundraising background – but we’ve already raised £12k so far.

Some preparation work has already begun on the site. The existing building is in very bad condition, with water coming through the ceiling, which is not a great environment for kids. Enough money has been raised (and we’ve supplemented this) to put a new concrete roof on and prepare the building with a simple grid of columns and beams to enable us to rearrange the ground floor.

The ground floor used to be a poultry farm so there’s a long courtyard with small rooms to the side, which were used as the classrooms. We’ve placed a concrete slab over this area with columns for support. This will help create a nice open multi purpose space that will be a lot brighter than it is at the moment. And we aim to re-use the bricks upstairs.

The building is arranged over three levels, using the existing structure on ground level with two storeys of accommodation above. We’ve also designed it in phases, which means that if we manage to successfully raise more funds, the first floor can then be built. As money trickles in then the building can trickle upwards.

Future hopes and developments

Hopefully next time we go back to Delhi we’ll be able to see some progress. We designed a lot of spaces that can provide the older girls with the opportunity to paint murals and I’d love to go back and help them with that. It was part of our idea to create a sense of ownership in the spaces, and nurture areas of creativity that are currently in limbo at the moment.

I'm excited at the prospect of being able to make a difference. It’s a scary responsibility when you think about it - the place we design in India will be a key part of life for thousands of children and women in the future. I hope that we can do John and Abha justice, and really connect to their vision for the place.”

To find out more about the project visit: http://tesseractproject.wordpress.com/about/

Images: David Fleck