Old Materials, New Ideas

Sometimes solving a problem that seems impossible only takes a new way of thinking about it.

I came to this story through a book on Epic called “Off to Class: Incredible and Unusual Schools Around the World” by Susan Hughes, and through the TED talk “How to build with clay ... and community”, by the architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, who won the 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the international award regarded as the most prestigious in architecture.

In 1999 the village school where he was born was on the point of collapse, and without it the children of the village would have had to walk for hours to the nearest school, or even stop going to school at all. After studying architecture in Germany, he went home in 2001 to build a school that the architectural world, and the world at large, regards as a feat.

Kéré came up with a new technique in which the traditional clay material is reinforced with 10% cement and then compressed by hand tools into sturdy building blocks. The same material is used on the walls, giving excellent thermal insulation. These redesigned building materials help create a larger structure able to withstand the annual rains. And there are so many other details; you can watch and read them at the link below.

https://www.ted.com/talks/diebedo_francis_kere_how_to_build_with_clay_and_community

https://www.archdaily.com/785955/primary-school-in-gando-kere-architecture