Bioclimatic Schools
Pupils and supervising staff
Environmental sponsorship
This project aims to improve equal opportunities for children in urban and rural populations.
Context
The schooling of children aged 3 to 6 is currently underdeveloped in rural Morocco. Since it is compulsory only from the age of 6, the government does not cover the remuneration of teachers for preschool (equivalent to nursery school), which is an obvious hindrance to its development. These preschool structures, when they exist in rural areas, are most often informal and unsuitable (garage without windows and without drinking water or toilets) with staff who are neither trained nor supervised. Due to this lack of early schooling, children from rural douars lag behind in school compared to urban children, who have the opportunity to attend school at a younger age. The result is a high dropout rate among rural children when they enter secondary school in cities, when the extent of the gap becomes evident and forces them to drop out of school.
Objectives
This project has 4 objectives:
- Construction of a classroom and a playground using locally available natural materials (stone, raw earth, straw, wood, reed) for 20 children aged 3 to 6
- Landscape of the playground (terraces, shading, vegetation, benches, etc.)
- Play and educational materials
- Building the environmental awareness of 62 pupils in primary and nursery schools
This construction combines:
- ancestral techniques using stone and mud
- modern techniques of thermal passivity and energy efficiency (ventilation, insulation, orientation of buildings, positioning and size of windows and doors)
Impacts
Environmental impacts
- Use of natural and locally available materials (stone, mud, straw, wood and reeds)
- Sustainable construction
- Low-energy balance for the construction
- Energy efficiency in the use of buildings
- Creation of a participatory garden
Socio-economic impacts
- Increased thermal capacity and comfort for pupils
- Respect for the cultural context
- Promotion of local craftsmen
- Involvement of the community and local authorities
- Training and skills transfer
- Awareness-building among student architects regarding the challenges of ecological construction
- Instilled environmental awareness in 62 pupils in nursery and primary schools
Achievements
An agreement was signed between the GoodPlanet Foundation, the provincial directorate of the Ministry of National Education of Agadir, the municipality of Drarga and the association Ait Ahmed pour le Développement to determine how to run this nursery school and maintain the building. This provides a guarantee of the viability and sustainability of the future nursery school. The construction took place from August 2017 to February 2018. It was organised by the association Ait Ahmed pour le Développement and supervised by architects Laurens Bekemans and Tommaso Bisogno, from BC Architects.
The school garden was developed by the association MCA, with the participation of the pupils.
© Fondation GoodPlanet © BC Architects BC © Tommaso Bisogno © Ennaji Lahcen © Oussama Mouknir
Photo credits : Fondation GoodPlanet, BC Architects & Studies, Tommaso Bisogno, Ennaji Lahcen, Oussama Mouknir, Ahmed Igmoullan
Operational partners
