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Status

In progress

Date

2021

Location

Beqaa, Lebanon

Team

Fouad Samara
Alain Aoun

The school targets Lebanese underprivileged children and Syrian refugees in the area. Operating over two shifts to cater for the largest possible number of students, the proposed school is located on a c. 6,000 sqm flat land within the plains of the Beqaa valley, overlooking both of Lebanon’s mountain ranges to its east and west.

The starting point is to tread as lightly as possible on the Beqaa Valley’s valuable terrain. The built intervention, therefore, within that historically fertile agricultural plain has to be done with environmental sensitivity. The use of rammed earth – from the soil of the land itself – is critical. It is a 100% renewable material that will provide the building with an indigenous character in terms of material, color, and texture. The concept of grafting the part of the terrain we are building on back onto the roof of the building in the form of an extensive planted roof further links the building to its immediate context. When seen from the surrounding mountains to the east and west, the building seems to grow out of the Beqaa Valley it is in and from.

Approaching the school, the site is defined by hedgerows – typical of the area. Low lying, mostly single-story walls that blend in with the surrounding landscape define spaces inside and out; planted rooves blur the definition between building and context.

Rising above the planted rooves, a handful of markers announce the school entrance, hall, water tower, and outdoor classroom / viewing platform. Covered in colored polycarbonate panels with red chosen to highlight the school’s entrance as children learn colors before numbers and letters, and the color red first.

The school’s rammed earth walls provide insulation and comfort in the extreme Beqaa Valley climate of hot dry summers and sub-zero cold winters. With planted rooves, courtyards, and compacted soil playgrounds extending the patchwork of colors and textures of the surrounding terrain, the school offers a safe and welcoming environment for the children and wider community to call home; offer rootedness that much of the community is in desperate need of.

Building with earth and having turf rooves were prevalent historically in the Levant; but that sensibility has almost been forgotten over the past century. In addition to their suitability for this particular project, a critical aim in the use of both rammed earth and extensive planted rooves is a didactic one for the community at large. The school hopes to reintroduce these sensibilities back into the community by providing a built implementation of these principles for a greener, healthier and more comfortable living; easily and economically sourced anywhere in the region; and critically for the vulnerable communities, with the added advantage of being self-built.

The school in itself becomes a lesson for the community at large; empowering people to help themselves and build their own homes and communities economically and environmentally; working with the land they are on. With time, and when no longer needed, these buildings can mostly be reintegrated into the land from which they were built.