Design Studio Master: Kindergarten Kambodscha
Approximately one third of the Cambodian population is affected by extreme poverty; 90 percent of them live in rural areas. That is where we will be working. 60 kilometers north of Phnom Penh lies the village of Mea Nork, 10 kilometers west of Odongk Airport in Cambodia.
The NGO “Smiling Gecko” has been operating there for several years. Its aim is to support people – most of them migrating from the slums of Phnom Penh – who want to come back to a self-determined life and a free and independent future. To this end, a community based on an agricultural economical system was started in 2014. The people help each other and use the collective as a reservoir for communication and exchange.
Since 2014, our professorship has supported “Smiling Gecko” in the construction of a school for 1,200 students for this community. The aim is to give the children growing up there the chance of an adequate and well-founded school education. Now “Smiling Gecko” has once again asked our professorship for help. The aim is to design, plan and build a kindergarten in the area.
In order to get to know the socio-cultural, ecological, economic and especially climatic conditions better, we undertake an excursion to Cambodia and to the building site near Phnom Penh at the beginning of the semester. The semester is conducted in cooperation with the professorships of structural design and building physics.
