SPONTANEOUS ARCHITECTURE IN RAJPUR

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“The future depends on what you do today.”    Mahatma Gandhi

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We participated in a joint 'spontaneous architecture' workshop commissioned by the government of Rajpur near Gandhinagar for the construction of four classrooms for the Marishala school. The project was inaugurated in the village following 20 days of construction, utilizing locally sourced building materials and non-mechanical fabrication methods. The main objective of the workshop was to develop new, create yet simple ways to design under budget and with resource constraints in the rural context. Our team discovered a playful interpretation of the classroom typology, with each classroom embodying its own theme.

Our target was to construct a single classroom prototype, which we called the “Massala” classroom. Our intention was to create a space with cooling environmental conditions, amid the village’s hot, arid climate. We achieved this through digging the existing ground level and constructing the lower brick plinth of classroom below the ground flat surface. The brick ground walls consequently emitted cool air and encouraged light wind circulation, thus providing a cool working space for the local students.