Learning Center in Myammar

It was designed when I was a student of Hiroto Kobayashi's laboratory at SFC, Keio University.The village of Mawhari, about a four-hour drive west of Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, is a poor farming village with a population of about 2,000 people and still lacking in various infrastructure such as electricity and water.
In this village, many families who were forced to migrate from other lands due to natural disasters live in extremely poor living conditions.
In the course of our research, it became clear that while the village has a lot of potential with many children living there, the rainy season, which lasts more than three months out of the year, interferes with farming, and children who are unable to go outside during this time are often subjected to violence in their small homes.
Therefore, in order to prepare a place for children playing and learning, we worked with the local YMCA to design a learning center in a field that was a playground for children. In designing the building, we exchanged opinions and held explanatory meetings through workshops with local residents, and came up with a way to share and collaborate on local construction methods, with the main focus on using LVL(Laminated Veneer Lumber) quickly and cheaply.
We built a foundation using brick-formed concrete, which is a local method, to prepare for the water that rises about one meter during the rainy season, and placed the structure on top of the foundation by pre-cutting LVL, which is distributed in Myanmar, and assembling it on site. The exterior walls and other finishes were done using locally available materials that are easily repaired by local people. As a result, the building is a hybrid system of new and old construction methods, and global and local materials.