The opening of the new school year in this country coincides with the onset of the rainy season, highlighting twin problems that confront us year after year.
The first is the seemingly perennial lack of classrooms and school buildings, with the Department of Education hard-pressed each time school opening season comes round to build enough classrooms for the ever-increasing population of students. Add to this the need to repair, if not rebuild entirely, school buildings damaged in typhoons and other natural disasters or simply falling apart due to time and substandard construction.
Around this time of the year, too, the Philippines comes in for its share of rains, typhoons, floods, landslides and other disasters. And for many communities, especially in the rural areas, the nearest and most convenient evacuation center is the local school, which many consider to be built of stronger, sturdier materials than their own flimsy houses. But what if this isn’t the case? What if the school house itself is vulnerable to the elements?
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Illac Diaz, 34, is a “social entrepreneur” who has gained recognition here and abroad for his innovative ideas on community building and sustainable architecture. Today, he is executive director of My Shelter Foundation, devoted to the popularization of “sustainable and replicable” structures that are adapted to local conditions, affordable for communities and local governments and harnessing the talents, energies and interest of the people they are to shelter. I first heard of him when My Shelter entered the “Panibagong Paraan” [New Way] competition with its “earth-bag school” project, which won a P1-million grant to replicate a pilot schoolhouse constructed from jute bags filled with earth and plastered over with cement, and distinguished by its domed, “igloo-like” profile.
Diaz later expanded the basic concept and with different partners embarked on an international search for the best, most affordable and most practical design for a schoolhouse that can withstand local weather conditions—heat, wind and rain—while providing an environment conducive to learning and sheltering disaster survivors.
“In many areas, our people become casualties when they reach the local school,” Diaz says, flashing on his laptop photos of school buildings reduced to rubble in recent typhoons. The traditional design of a public school, he explains, has been shown to be vulnerable to disasters, particularly to high winds and floods. “With global warming, experts predict that there will be an escalation in the strength and impact of typhoons, and so we need to break out of the mold and look for designs of school buildings that are not only typhoon-proof and earthquake-proof, but also environment-friendly and affordable.”
Last year, My Shelter Foundation launched the “Be Better Build Better” program, starting with the Millennium School Competition, which drew entries from architects around the world which were evaluated and judged by an international panel.
Project partners were the Philippine Green Building Council (PhilGBC), the National Disaster Coordinating Council, the United Architects of the Philippines, the Private Sector Disaster Management Network, Redeye and the Department of Education.
Providing funding support for logistics, promotions, prize money and for the construction of the pilot building from the winning design are sponsors Holcim Cement, DHL, ABS-CBN Foundation, Rotary International and the Manila Jaycees.
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Exciting indeed are the winning designs that are currently on display at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where Diaz is currently completing his Masters in Public Administration.
First-prize winner is a Malaysian architect who thought up of a school building fashioned from a concrete shell with bamboo walls, floors and pillars. “Do you know that bamboo is many times more flexible and stronger than concrete and steel beams?” asks Diaz. Not only is the building designed to “sway” with the wind, with the sloped roof sloughing off rain water, it also relies on a renewable building material. In fact, says Diaz, the community could even “plant a school” in the area, with a bamboo grove they could nurture to provide the replacement material.
Other winning designs are just as interesting and “quirky,” including one design that would use waste material from organic toilets to fertilize the school gardens. Another protects the core building from the elements with a shell of metal louvers, which would close up “like an armadillo,” says Diaz, during typhoons. Another design has a façade with a zigzag profile, meant to “break up” wind forces.
All the winners and runners-up utilize natural cross-ventilation, rely on natural lighting as much as possible, and feature elevated flooring and foundations to protect the structures from floodwater.
Certainly, the winning designs are a far cry from the traditional square and squat concrete structures with galvanized iron roofs. Featuring for the most past sloped rooflines and profiles that harken to traditional Asian designs, the “new” schools are in fact attractive and even playful.
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“I just hope Department of Education and other officials aren’t so invested in a school house template that they cannot entertain new ideas,” says Diaz. For now, the department has agreed to have the winning design constructed in Camarines Sur province under the Adopt-a-School program, which, so promotional materials claim, “may be the impetus for revolutionizing how school buildings should be built in a developing country.”
