WATERBANK schools in Futurarc jan feb 14 vol 34

Jan-Feb 2014 | volume 34 MCI (P) 010/11/2013

PPS 1786/04/2013(022947)

Architecture of Learning

Vo l u m e 3 4 J a n -F e b 2 0 14

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By Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle

education Photo by Nic Lehoux

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MAIN FEATURE

Currently, China is not sustainable. The ruralurban thresholds where we work are volatile and subsequent to rapid change through demolition and construction.

Waterbank School 10 & 11 Exterior views 12 Students gather in the courtyard that conceals a large underground cistern

Low Tech, High Impact Turning conventional wisdom on its head, the Waterbank Schools initiative—the brainchild of architects and social entrepreneurs, David Turnbull and Jane Harrison, who head New Jersey-based non-profit PITCHAfrica— is transforming the design of school buildings worldwide by using rain as a catalyst for social, economic and environmental transformation. Showcasing a school’s commitment to sustainability and community development, Waterbank Schools serve as a pedagogical tool addressing social needs, helping people rise out of poverty mainly due to a lack of access to clean water, and making possible dramatic improvements in hygiene, health, crop cultivation and nutrition. PITCHAfrica takes a holistic approach to school infrastructure design in semi-arid regions, believing that education must go hand-in-hand with the provision of basic resources like clean water, food and sanitation on-site for students, who then go on to spread knowledge about managing interrelated environmental resources at home, in their villages and throughout the region.

Founding partners Harrison and Turnbull, who describe PITCH as a “manmade ecosystem capable of empowering and transforming communities”, see the Waterbank Schools as a transformative, low-cost building prototype and an effective example of a community engagement tool for poor regions in need of water, as once the schools become resource rich, they can teach the immediate community rainwater harvesting, water filtration, conservation agriculture and hygiene techniques. Patrick Mwaura, headmaster of PITCHAfrica’s first rainwater-harvesting Waterbank School building at Uaso Nyiro Primary School in Kenya’s Central Highlands, says, “The staff, pupils, parents and surrounding community are delighted that our hard work and efforts to transform our school from a semi-arid desert into an oasis of greenery with water to spare have been recognised. This transformation was enabled by the construction of the Waterbank building, which has ensured that the attitudes of our staff and pupils are positive and conducive to learning and discipline. Attendance has dramatically increased and our students are taking home the lessons about health, water and nutrition, and strengthening the whole community.”

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The facility serves an underprivileged pastoralist community where most inhabitants live on less than US$1 per day. Since its opening, school attendance has increased from 25 to 94 percent, with waterborne disease levels dropping to zero. “We are committed to working with communities across the African continent and in water-stressed regions globally to show how annual rainfall is so often sufficient to address water needs and can serve as a powerful catalyst for a sustainable model of development,” states Harrison. “At PITCHAfrica and with our partner organisation ATOPIA Research, we are developing what we call ‘dynamic infrastructure’ for highly-complex social and environmental situations. Dynamic infrastructure integrates essential social, economic and environmental processes with the physical design and structure of the building, creating an active platform for community engagement, and social and environmental support and transformation. The Waterbank Schools initiative is an exciting example of this.”

The Waterbank School building at Uaso Nyiro Primary School—recently named “The Greenest School on Earth” by the US Green Building Council (the other recipient was Sing Yin Secondary School in Hong Kong, see page 68)—is a simply-constructed, low-tech but smart alternative to the four-classroom barrack-style, linear school building prevalent throughout the developing world. Costing less than US$60,000, it educates 350 students and supplies water to the 700-strong school community. In fact, a Waterbank School can be built for the same cost, using local labour, with the same materials and the same expertise as a traditional school building, but provides twice the accommodation and numerous life-changing amenities. Organised around a central courtyard that serves as a community classroom and that has already become an important gathering place for the school community, it houses an underground reservoir for water from the 557-square metre roof, designed to collect instead of deflect rainwater. The school harvests, stores and filters 350,000 litres of clean water annually for the children, provides gardens for growing vegetables, and includes a large communal space for community workshops and a courtyard theatre for environment-based plays. The perimeter stone enclosure protects the school, gardens and water supply from elephants and strong winds, and creates a comfortable microclimate.

Built by hand in four months, the school is naturally lit and ventilated, consumes no energy, grows its fresh food resources sustainably, and carries out training programmes covering animal conservation, beehive and honey conservation, community agriculture, reforestation and cooking fuel conservation. It also incorporates technologies that can be locally produced and establishes local markets and enterprise opportunities for the future, like the ceramic water filtration system and Wonderbag cooker that reduces cooking time. Rachel Gutter, director of the Center for Green Schools at the US Green Building Council, comments, “By their very nature, schools around the world—including the Waterbank School building at Uaso Nyiro Primary School—inherently function as centres of their community. The Waterbank School building takes that one step further. Through the 12

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MAIN FEATURE

This is the very core of sustainability: to ensure that we, our children, and our children’s grandparents have what we need to not just survive, but to thrive.

Portland Community College (PCC) 13 The building form communicates the natural ventilation and passive cooling strategies through ventilation stacks that organise the circulation spine 14 Large areas of glazing around the building, and between classrooms and commons create transparency, generating excitement about learning

school’s efforts, it is ensuring that its students and families have clean water to drink and healthy food to eat.

This is the very core of sustainability: to ensure that we, our children, and our children’s grandparents have what we need to not just survive, but to thrive.”

A finalist of the 2013 “Buckminster Fuller Challenge”, which supports the development and implementation of solutions with major potential to solve the world’s most pressing problems as quickly as possible while enhancing ecological integrity, and winner of its “Interface Support” award, the Waterbank School echoes Fuller’s famous call to the world’s most inventive and creative people to “make the world work for 100 percent of humanity”. Sharifah Taqi, programme manager of the “Buckminster Fuller Challenge”, notes, “Waterbank Schools are a working demonstration of the remarkable leveraging power of water catchment as a sociallyintegrated resource awareness tool. The buildings are literal demonstrations of a simple set of solutions to multiple complex problems, and quickly become communication and educational tools for the community.

Teachers, students and parents are brought into the construction process, and the schools are used for many purposes—a church, performance space, and environmental centre—providing a knowledge-sharing and training hub for the surrounding region. The Waterbank Schools design is an elegant and practical way of addressing sanitation, health and education.”

A Living Laboratory “Schools and colleges are de facto community centres and neighbourhood gathering places,” states Timothy R. Eddy, principal at Portland-based Hennebery Eddy Architects. “They have become catalysts in the dialogue about their immediate ecosystems and their communities’ relationship to the global ecosystem. They are, like our children, a key part of our greatest hope.” His firm’s US$7.2 million, 1,254-square metre Newberg Center addition to Portland Community College’s (PCC) network in Oregon, completed in 2011, is the first net-zero higher education building in the state, accessible to broad socio-economic groups. Its mission is to “advance the region’s long-term vitality by delivering accessible, quality education to support the academic, professional and personal development of the…communities PCC serves”.

The one-storey building takes into account the scale of the immediate residential area, while providing a community gathering space under the south-facing roof extending to create a large, shaded and sheltered entry plaza. Substantial glazing around the building and between the classrooms and commons introduces transparency, allowing community members to experience the educational environment as well as generating excitement about learning. Eddy elaborates, “The campus master plan addresses the surrounding residential neighbourhood by creating an intentionally permeable edge that welcomes the community onto campus and establishes future open spaces, a central quad, pedestrian systems, parking and sites for six academic buildings.” Throughout the design process, the architects worked closely with community and user groups, including those representing city governments, high school students and local organisations, for example holding a student meeting to gather input and goals for the academic building, and hands-on design workshops where participants shared ideas and built consensus.

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A model of a school as a testing ground for new technologies, sustainable strategies and energy-efficient design, the centre educates users on sustainability and conservation. Aiming to satisfy PCC’s new sustainability goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, the LEED Platinum-designed facility supports this mission by serving as a living laboratory for looking at energy-use strategies. As such, it is used as a testing structure for new systems so that facilities staff can learn about the technologies and the systems’ maintenance before they are applied on other buildings across PCC’s three campuses and seven educational centres. Providing classroom, office and common space for the new 15-acre campus in Newberg, a small town in the Willamette Valley, this first building in the master plan minimises energy use by focusing on four strategies: creating a highly-efficient envelope, maximising passive design strategies; using efficient systems; and engaging the user. A 109kW rooftop solar system supplies the remaining energy necessary for the building.

Eddy says, “As a public institution with a deep environmental commitment, PCC wanted to demonstrate that sustainability is not only for private, big-budget institutions. It can, and should, be done on a public budget to create sustainable spaces accessible to all socio-economic groups. The Newberg Center is a living laboratory where the building is used as part of the curriculum. One example of an opportunity to engage students was a recent tour led by Hennebery Eddy Architects with a class from PCC’s architectural and drafting programme.

Students were able to see first-hand the use of natural ventilation, daylighting and photovoltaic panels that will allow the centre to reach net-zero energy use. Creating opportunities to engage students and use the building as part of the curriculum is exactly what PCC envisioned for Newberg Center—students are learning from realworld applications of sustainable and energy-efficient design.”

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Photos by Stephen A. Miller

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