Studio Mortazavi and Thinking Huts have teamed up to create the world’s first 3D printed school in Madagascar, reports Fast Company.
Said to offer a model for affordable educational spaces in under-resourced communities, the school will be 3D printed with material from the local area and will boast of an exterior pattern based on Malagasy textiles.
According to architect Amir Mortazavi, the new 3D printing approach makes for fast building, while also addressing local shortages of labor.
“We can build these schools in less than a week, including the foundation and all the electrical and plumbing work that’s involved,” explains Mortazavi. “Something like this would typically take months, if not even longer.”
Shedding light on the printing process, Mortazavi says the school will be constructed through a machine-driven process that pipes out smooth layers of concrete-like material that cure to form the structure, including space for utilities, windows, and doors.
The school’s design is based on a honeycomb, separated into individual nodes.
Each polygonal node is mostly a single open room, with two small bathrooms, a closet space, windows, custom-designed passive ventilation near the ceiling, and two wide entrances.
The nodes can be combined to form clusters of rooms that either expand the space or remain as individual rooms for different educational purposes:
“We can have classrooms for different age groups, science laboratories, computer laboratories, housing for teachers, for students, music nodes, fine arts rooms,” adds Mortazavi.
“We designed it in a way that we could combine dozens of these together.”
He says this building approach is highly replicable, and he hopes his design can lead to node-based 3D printed schools throughout Madagascar and beyond.
Image and content: Studio Mortazavi,Thinking Huts/Fast Company
