THE HIDEOUT Kushi Lai The hideout is a crowd funded kindergarten which aims to prepare up to 120 preschool children for primary schooling at the existing on-site buildings. The design proposal is to adapt various successful elements from Evergreen school in Zambia, Ulyakulu school in Tanzania, muyinga library in Burundi with the overall goal to reuse already familiar construction methods around local materials. The strategy employed in the design of the hideout is forensic, in that it aims to calculate the quantities of materials down to each brick to provide to the stakeholder charity confidence to support similar projects. Further more, it aims to find ways which the community and take advantage of the hand-on construction method. Which for instance would allow them to create seating by rotating a block as opposed to cutting it short, or reallocating precious materials by alleviating the needs of load bearing columns in vital locations. The following pages illustrate first the structural principals demonstrated in the mention precedents. Workload of teams are more evenly distributed by making alterations such as the replacement of concrete blocks and modification of the truss structure. By adopting a more sophisticated truss structure, the building eliminates 43% of its material and labour requirement. The surplus bricks can then be used to improve quality of life for inhabitants by creating fins which act as wind walls or internally landscaped play and reading spaces. The hideout is an introverted complex of 4 classrooms in total, with the focus around placemaking thus using the existing trees as place markers. The modified structure allows the central space to be kept in view at all times with an improved field of view. Moving the project forward I would be keen to investigate in further detail in cost and quantity, through rigorous detailing of the material parts, time and labour requirement I can illustrate a proposal in bite-size portions with elements which charities and locals are confidently able to adopt for other projects.
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