The first in a remote region of over 110 villages to provide secular education alongside Quranic teaching, this school, with on-site housing for two teachers, serves up to 300 children aged 5 to 10. Unlike the area’s typical government-approved schoolrooms - metal-roofed concrete blocks that are unbearably hot in summer and impossibly noisy during rainfall - it offers passive climatic comfort and was built using local skills and materials, minimising costs and facilitating future repairs. The oval plan, inspired by Senegal’s vernacular multi-family impluvium dwellings, comprises four classrooms and two flex spaces around a courtyard, enabling teachers to manage multiple classrooms. Heat protection is offered by the white-painted mud-brick walls laid in a pattern that allows airflow and by the asymmetrically tilted bamboo-and-thatch roof. The latter also offers shifting areas of shade in the courtyard and provides a topographical feature within a flat landscape, enabling potable water collection through run-off into barrels.

Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture