project info: The Little Prince School
- project typeCompetition
- statusConcept
- design year2022
- built area1200 m2
- Location Senegal
- client The Earth School Competition
team
- Architect Ahmad Ghodsimanesh
- design team Mohsen Natanj,
Samane Zare,
Maryam Nazemolboka,
Mahdiye Hedayati,
Zohre Tavakoli,
Mozhgan Asefi,
Sara Khoram khorshid
about The Little Prince School
Senegal is located where the Sahara and the green Africa meet. The challenge of designing a school in Senegal projected us to the world of the “le petit prince”; our imagination started off a journey with him from the Sahara to Senegal; in the other word: students are invited to the world of “le petit prince”. This story, as one of the classics of 20th century literature and, highly likely, the most popular one is commonly interesting to the children and has a proper upbringing role for them.
Classes are designed in the form of sphere, which identifies the planets of the story, where Le petit prince learnt moral human principles, producing universal spaces to learn “think global and act local “. This form also represents the simplicity of the construction and merges the concept with the construction.
Classes are arranged around the Baobab tree to form “Pencha” the place where local people gather to talk, do ceremonies, etc…, and as it is obvious that the local pass way crossed the school site was considered. People of two villages are invited to school; this may be helpful to accept this school as a part of their society rather than a closed system of pedagogy.
Here, localism illustrates itself in the architecture of the earth and simple local building technology to reduce costs.
Relevancy of “In” and “Out” is considered with a light structure, to accelerate the construction regardless of genders or age of people who contribute to this.
The concept of Boa snake is a central and important idea of the “le petit prince”. The difference between Shape and the form is, by what he surprised. To indicate it the shelter forms the pathway of the student playing the role of boa snake circling the Baobab tree. Boa snake plays the role of the epic meaning of life as well.
The passive ventilation sustainable system organized by using earth capacity construction and the thermal fume hood well mixed with the story of the prince rose planet and the small volcano of his planet.
To create a waterproof coating, Sarooj is recommended, a traditional water-resistant mortar in Iranian architecture which is made of clay and limestone mixed in a six-to-four and kneaded for two days. A portion of furnace slags from baths is combined with cattail (Typha) fibers, egg, and straw, and fixed, then beaten with a wooden stick.