Tenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Right to education is a fundament right of children all over the globe as enshrined in the United Nations manifesto. In most developing countries in the world, there is a huge deficit in providing basic human needs like food, shelter, health facilities and education. In rural areas especially, there is a shortage of infrastructure to house basic functional activities like primary schools, primary health centres, etc. The objective of this paper is to document a pilot project which utilizes sustainable materials and technology to mitigate the problem of shortage of educational infrastructure in rural areas of developing countries. Designing a rural school with basic available materials like bamboo, terracotta, straw, etc. which are locally available in most parts of the globe and explore the possibility of using a globally acceptable and adaptable geodesic dome technology and modular concepts of planning. The principle of geodesic dome is taken a step further to evolve a geodesic dome made of bamboo and other locally available materials. The local population can be trained to erect these bamboo geodesic domes to form a basic module of a class room which can then be repeated multiple times and and can be put together and erected in any rural area by training local self-help groups, thus attaining sustainability in terms of using skill sets as well. This study is in the form of documentation of a pilot project which will be physically evolved and erected for a school in rural India.