Learning Landscape
Learning Landscape
Kutamba School, Uganda
Designers: Project H
Design nonprofit Project H, which concentrates on design initiatives for humanity, habitats, health, and happiness, completed the construction of their first Learning Landscape, a playground that teaches elementary math concepts using ten interactive games. Built from reclaimed tires in a simple sandbox structure, the pilot installation was built at the Kutamba AIDS Orphans School in southern Uganda.
Designed by a group of Project H volunteer designers, the Learning Landscape is a scalable grid-based system for elementary math education. Industrial designers Heleen de Goey, Dan Grossman, Kristina Drury, Neha Thatte, and Ilona de Jongh conceived of ten math games to be played within a grid. Because mathematics is universal, the system can be applied in any country, using any language for instruction, and can be tailored to a range of skill levels.
Images by Project H design
Part outdoor classroom, part spatially immersive lesson in arithmetic, the math playground gives students a place to study in at least two senses of the phrase. On the one hand, it’s simply a forum for learning; on the other, it is literally a place to study: the space itself, serves as a model for play-based education.
The Kutamba AIDS Orphans School, built by Matthew Miller in partnership with Architecture for Humanity, served as the case study and initial pilot installation of a playground-sized version of the system. The four-by-four grid was constructed using reclaimed tires, and a simple sand box structure. Each of the tires marks a point on the grid, and can also be used as outdoor classroom space when coupled with the integrated bench system. Numbers can be written directly onto the tires with chalk for game play.
The ten games teach concepts including addition, subtraction, multiplicaiton, and division, as well as spatial and logical reasoning through individual and team-based competition. In Match Me, for example, students form two teams. The teacher calls out a math equation, and one student from each team compete against each other to solve the equation, then locate the tire with that number on it, sitting atop the correct tire. The team member who finds the tire first returns to the team’s line. The team with whose players remain in the line the longest wins.
The Learning Landscape, though realized as a playground in its pilot installation, is a universal system that can be used at a variety of scales. Project H has continued its adaptation of the system, developing a product-sized version for in-classroom tabletop use based on the same grid games. The systems-approach, rather than object-approach, lends itself to a solution that is both universal and adaptable for specific contexts.
Based on the success of the the Uganda project, Project H has gone on to build another similar landscape in North Carolina. According to Project H founder Emiliy Pilloton:
“So in bringing something like this to the U.S., we obviously still want to serve the developing world and design for the other 90%, but at the same time, this is a very rural school district, incredibly underperforming, over three-quarters African American, extremely poor. And we forget that the developing world is, in a way, in our own backyard. The demographics were slightly different, but in a lot of ways the same. So we wanted to use the Learning Landscape in Africa and also in our own backyard to draw those parallels.”
Project H hopes to build at least 5 more in Africa and in the US. To find out how you can support the philanthropic construction of future Learning Landscapes elsewhere please visit the Project H donation page.
See the whole research, design, and installation process through their Flickr sets.
Brian Vermeulen on Great Zimbabwe
The architecture firm of Cottrell and Vermeulen claims diverse interests, from the built environment to landscape, exhibitions and new construction technologies and advocates a collaborative approach. The team has wide experience in education design. They have a reputation for innovation in early years and primary school design in particular. Their school work has gained acclaim throughout the United Kingdom. With African vernacular as inspiration, the firm prepared the Exemplar Schools Design report for the UK Department of Education and Skills in 2003.
In a June 2009 interview with Building Magazine’s Pamela Buxton, Partner Brian Vermeulen describes how the African Site of Great Zimbabwe, a major trading center until the 15th century, has influenced his work.
“I grew up in Zimbabwe, and when other architecture students were looking at Le Corbusier, my inspiration was more African.
I first saw Great Zimbabwe when I was about 11 or 12 — it was the only significant example of monumental architecture in southern Africa. At the time, I just saw very well put together stones and nice shapes and wasn’t aware of its political symbolism. Growing up in a white colonial state in the sixties and seventies I was politically naive and it was only when I went to Cape Town University to study architecture that I started getting interested in what I was doing in Africa.
It was a very strange political environment. South Africa was going through turmoil; Zimbabwe was going through a war. On my course, everyone else was looking at James Stirling who was the big thing at the time, but I decided to research African architecture and symbolism and I needed to get security clearance to go into archives to read banned documents on Great Zimbabwe. I got a shock when I realised that archaeologists had found out that it was built by Africans but had been banned from saying so because the regime was worried about encouraging black power. The documents had red stamps on them saying things like “confidential”, and “banned”. I slowly realised how censored society was — you become angry when you think you’ve been lied to. It changed me, and when I later moved to London I became involved in Architects Against Apartheid.
I went back to Great Zimbabwe as a student and again twice since. It’s the biggest sub-Saharan monumental building and is very well put together — some walls are 5m thick at the base and then taper upwards and there are very unusual organic shapes and corridors. The sacred part of the site is higher up, like an acropolis on a ridge; the space within the walled enclosure to the south is almost like the agora and is where the king may have lived. The space inbetween was where the people lived. The tall conical structure may be a symbolic grain silo.
There are things here that you can read into. On the top of the ridge were sacred stone birds that were taken off to museums by archaeologists. There’s a theory that they are Bataleur eagles. These are special — when I was a boy, people used to clap when they flew over. In the animist tradition of belief, the landscape, birds and animals were filled with powerful meanings and some of the trees on the site, such as the fig trees would have been highly symbolic. The landscape around it is very powerful — maybe that’s one of the reasons why there isn’t much monumental architecture in this part of Africa.
Photo Credit: Cottrell and Vermeulen
Unlike in Europe, a palace in Africa isn’t just the actual building. It’s the domain in which the building takes place — the space inside the retaining boundary wall and the temporary structures within it, which is quite a modern idea. You get an entire complex of buildings within the walls, sometimes incorporating trees and natural features. In some places in Africa, for example Mali, the people often sleep outside and put the animals inside so that the living space is the external room.
Great Zimbabwe influenced the way I see space, especially in our school buildings. In schools, outdoor space is just as important as internal space so the African palace is the perfect model — Cottrell & Vermeulen included it in some of the guidance we did for the government on Building Schools For the Future. The school becomes not just the building but a landscape for learning.
We’re currently building a Hindu school in Harrow — the Krishna-Avanti Primary School. We prompted our client to talk about the landscape in Hindu culture and we got another picture. In traditional Hindu villages they have one area of land which is spiritual (dharma), another area for wildlife, and another for prosperity (crops and livestock). In the school, we have a spiritual courtyard garden, vegetable gardens outside the classrooms and apple trees in the playground, as well as an undulating wildlife area around the perimeter.
At Westborough Primary School in Westcliff on Sea, where we previously designed a cardboard building, we’re now doing a zero-carbon refurbishment and this, by coincidence, has an African garden and recycled play structures. The school landscape is an extension of the classrooms and is a learning resource in itself.
After independence, Great Zimbabwe went a bit touristy for a while — the grass was cleared and curio sellers appeared. But now, after the turmoil of the last few years, the tourists have gone.
The grass grows very quickly and I’m hoping to go back again to rediscover the spaces that first inspired me.”
Inspiration: Great Zimbabwe
Built: 11th-15th centuries
Location: Masvingo, Zimbabwe
Formed of regular, rectangular granite stones, carefully placed one upon the other, Great Zimbabwe is the ruins of an amazing complex and a protected World Heritage Site. This major trading centre was built by the Bantu civilisation of the Shona between the 11th and 15th centuries and covered nearly 80ha. It had an estimated 18,000 inhabitants and controlled most of internal south-east Africa, with artefacts found there from as far away as China.
It consists of three areas: the hill complex, which was used as a temple and is the oldest part of the site dating back to 900AD; the valley complex, which was for the citizens; and the Great Enclosure or walled town, which was used by members of the elite classes.
The stone walls, up to 6meter thick and 12 meter high, are built of granite blocks without the use of mortar. Two high walls form the narrow parallel passage, 60 meter long, that allows direct access to the Conical Tower. Each layer of stones was laid on top of the other slightly more recessed than the last, to produce a stabilising inward slope. Early constructions used rough blocks and incorporated features of the landscapes such as boulders, while later walls were more refined.
The walls are thought to be indications of status, rather than purely defensive. The walls surrounded huts and linked them to form a series of courtyards. Some researchers claim the complex included an astronomy observatory.
The Great Enclosure is the largest single ancient structure south of the Sahara.
It is unclear why the city was abandoned. European explorers initially believed the city was the work of non-Africans — either the Phoenicians or Arabs. Archaeological excavations early in the 20th century found that the site was built by Africans but archaeologists were discouraged from suggesting that sub-Saharan Africans had instigated such a grand construction.
Eight carved soapstone birds measuring 30cm high were found in the ruins, combining human and bird features. After independence, the image of one of these birds became a symbol on the new Zimbabwe flag, with the country taking its name from the site.
A slide show of Great Zimbabwe images can be seen here.
Gando Primary School
Gando Primary School
Gando, Burkina Faso
Architect: Diébédo Francis Kéré
A recipient of a 2004 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the story behind Diébédo Francis Kéré‘s design for the Primary School in Gando, Burkina Faso is even more fascinating that the building itself. It is a story of philanthropy, the importance of education, local tradition and skills, and one man’s desire to make it all happen.
Architect Francis Kéré is the first person from Gando – a small town about 200 km (125 miles) from the country’s capital Ouagadougou – to study abroad, choosing to pursue an architectural degree in Berlin. Believing that his hometown needed a good school facility, Kéré set up a fund-raising association (Bricks for the Gando School) with friends and eventually received support from the Burkina Faso government organization LOCOMAT to train masons in the technique of compressed earth. In effect the building’s undertaking is a mix of local and international components, the latter helping to fund the project though thankfully not influencing its form; rather local climatic concerns are the greatest form-giver.
The simple plan arranges three classrooms linearly, broken by covered outdoor areas. The classrooms are separated by covered exterior teaching spaces, that link the building to the surrounding landscape. A corrugated metal roof hovers above the load-bearing walls of compressed earth, also used for the ceiling. The roof, wall and ceiling construction all allow for cooling of the interior, an important consideration in Gando. The heavy block work ceilings, walls and beaten earth floors make use of the materials thermal mass in moderating internal temperatures. A wind channel has been formed between the roof and ceiling to expell hot air, drawing in fresh air at low level.Commonly found industrial materials have been carefully used to create a simple yet poetic piece of architecture.
From the Aga Khan website: “All the people involved in the project management were native to the village, and the skills learned here will be applied to further initiatives in the village and elsewhere. The way the community organized itself has set an example for two neighbouring villages, which subsequently built their own schools as a cooperative effort. The local authorities have also recognized the project’s worth: not only have they provided and paid for the teaching staff, but they have also endeavoured to employ the young people trained there in the town’s public projects, using the same techniques.”
The community cohesion and project management has demonstrated to local villages the benefits in using local building techniques and inspired them to complete their own projects. A second phase has recently been completed and provides teachers accommodation. As with the first phase, it has been managed and built by local people
