Volume Zero announces Winners for ReSchool 2021 Architecture Competition

ReSchool

Volume Zero Competition, is here to announce the winners of the “ReSchool 2021 Architecture Competition. The participants were encouraged to design a multifunctional educational space so as to accommodate a capacity of 200 students from the age group of 5 to 11 years with a built-up area of 500 square meters.

The spaces designed were not to be limited to the standard activities viz. educational spaces, sanitary and administrative areas; the goal of the designed spaces was to promote innovative activities that stimulate accelerated learning and development. The competition aimed to focus on architecture and infrastructure as an instrument of social change.

  • First place: Scala by Xintian Chen – Li Xie Chuyin Qi

Scala School emphasizes utilizing Sichuan – Tibetan dwellings’ pattern, combining legacy craftsmanship, modern education infrastructure and local religions as well as various country town planning. Sitting in Baiyu, the small country wrapped by the rolling mountains, Scala School employs a trapezoidal layout which divides itself into three groups.

The nylon of Tibetan Buddhism is used as more guides and lenses to gather the aura and make the building truly land. The columns network construction method prepares for infinite extension possibilities for the future which implies education in rural areas as its own possibility.

  • Second Place: Woven School by Abhishek Dhar – Nupur Kumari – Hamza Azmi

Every monsoon season, at least 30 districts in Assam get ravaged by the wrath of the Brahmaputra River. These perennial floods take a toll on learning across the state, forcing the administration to spend extra resources to make them ready for the resumption of classes after the monsoon. Learning is affected for months.

This increases school dropout rates resulting in child labor and the early marriage of the girls. The selected site in the village of Sonapur, Assam is home to a weaving tribe. For the women of the ‘missing tribe’, weaving is just another household chore. It is gradually becoming extinct courtesy of annual floods. The intrinsic beauty of their weaving is impossible to be replicated in a power loom.

  • Third Place: Re Nurture by Mohit Yadav

The whole world is rebooting its traditional way of functioning to ring in the newly introduced covid lifestyle. The pandemic has been unveiled to reform age-old practices and precede toward a fresh lifestyle as it is a hint for a revolution which was the need of the hour. Thus reimagining the future of schools there comes forward this need for them to be sustainable and, at the same time, able to sustain the new post-covid requirements.

It has to be outdoor spaces inclusive and open to nature, made of natural materials and low-cost construction techniques, as a modular design. It has to be highly flexible and able to be adapted to different functions and programs, and provide several benefits to the whole community, becoming the incipit for the requalification of peripheral public areas.

10 Honorable Mentions

  • Nomadic School by Mozhnaya Polina Alexeyevna – Suzan Buyuran – Kirill (Russia)
  • Dhevat Sobti (India)
  • Rohingya – People of Nowhere by Rohit Mondal – Minishree Barkachary (India)
  • ACI Wayuu School by Luis Menedez Sanchez (Ecuador)
  • Keren by Salem Schewai (Canada)
  • Planting A Seed by Batool Alqasas – Zarreen Khan (Canada)
  • Bambu-Batu by Jagjot Singh (India)
  • Sprawling Seed by Burcu Beslioglu – Ezgi Aydogan Tekcan – Doga Akac (Turkey)
  • Roots by Paul Varghese – Prachi Morakhia (India)
  • The Third Teacher by Riya Venki (India)