Our building design
Project Description
This is a community focused charity project led by the UK registered charity Mannan Foundation Trust. This community building accommodates free healthcamps for the community and free literacy classes for the disadvantaged women in the village. We worked with the charity and the communities living in the remote village called Rajapur, to work towards improving access to healthcare and education in Rajapur.
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Design Strategy
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The process of the design of the Rajapur Centre, was an inter-cultural one; a team of London-based professional volunteers fundraised and worked with the local communities in Rajapur. To ensure the transfer of distribution of power and to achieve community-ownership, local community was involved from the outset, in design and in the final build.
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Environmental Strategy:
The design strategy we adopted to build the Rajapur Centre is constructed from rammed earth and bamboo, the building sits on (concrete) stilts above a pukur, so it benefits from evaporative cooling through its special perforated bamboo and earth walls. Local materials utilised are intended to be resilient to the area’s challenging climate; the high thermal mass of the rammed earth walls help combat extreme temperatures that can reach 45 degrees or above.
During monsoon season flooding is avoided as the building is raised and the rain is embraced and collected in the pond (below) to enhance the fish-farming pond’s eco-system.