UAE students design school

A group of UAE-based students of architecture have designed a school to be built in Cameroon by local humanitarian organisations, AUD International Aid (AIA) and Open Source Arc.

The design was created during a workshop and competition organised by Open Source Arc and held at Shelter Gallery in Dubai during the last weekend in May.

During the three-day workshop, 40 architecture students from the American Universality of Sharjah, American University in Dubai, Canadian University in Dubai and Sharjah University were split into groups and asked to design a school with four classrooms.

The designs had to directly address the social and economic needs of Umbissa in Cameroon as well as the environmental and functional requirements in a region of limited resources. The judges advised that the winning proposal should consider intelligent methods of design, construction techniques and materials.

Describing the competition, George Katodrytis from Open Source Arc, said: "The competition has been an opportunity for students of the UAE to collaborate and use their knowledge and skills to design for children in a deprived region of our planet. The participants challenged their consciousness and ethical values. A large group of practicing architects joined this effort as well with equal enthusiasm. The dynamics and outcome of this event were beyond our expectations."

The judges finally chose the winning scheme in recognition of its more straightforward construction, consisting of a series of learning spaces arranged along a wall with staccato breaks in its structure. The team conceived of the walls as being a space from which knowledge and information can "leak" into the classrooms that extend from it.