Earth School Prototype in Ghana
Description of the designers. InsideOut is a school prototype built in Yeboahkrom, a rural village in Ghana where the wind had destroyed the only school of the area. This non-profit project, designed by Andrea Tabocchini & Francesca Vittorini, won an international competition and was constructed in 60 days with just 12 000 euro, together with the local population and volunteers from 20 different countries.
Since no electricity was available it was built by hand, crafting materials available on site (earth, wood and vegetation), moving by hand 58 000 kg of soil and planing 3km of wood with 2 hand planers.
The lack of resources and the site limitations become the opportunity to propose a sustainable design that merges architecture and landscape: the staggered walls of the classrooms are built by compacting the local earth, a light wood structure lifts the roof up, allowing zenithal light into the building, and generates a natural ventilation of the spaces, while the vegetation of the garden becomes the continuation of the porches, increasing the shaded spaces to study outdoor.
The result is a work that blurs the boundary between inside and outside, offering an alternative to standard introverted classrooms and proposing an affordable and easily replicable design that values the local know-how and pushes its limits.
The project has received several international awards and has been considered by Designboom one of the best 10 school projects in the world in 2017.
