Ladakh learning: an idealistic school in the Himalayas aims to transform education for poor and remote people and be an example of sustainable building of the area - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, May, 2002

SCHOOL, LADAHK, KASHMIR ARCHITECT

ARUP ARCHITECTS & ENGINEERS

The Druk White Lotus School is part of the village of Shey, Ladakh in the upper Indus valley under the awesome arid slopes of the western Himalayas. At the moment, it consists of a nursery and an infants section, catering for 86 children in two classes, but it is expected to grow gradually to provide 800 places for three to 18 year-olds. Eventually, it will have 200 residential places for orphans and children from remote areas who now do not receive formal education. The school is intended to blend a modern academic education with local Buddhist culture. Some of its elements, like the court that separates the two pavilions, are based on local monasteries (see for instance AR November 2001).

One of the chief determinants of the school's form was sustainability. The building is intended to be a pattern for new development in Ladakh, a place where the supply road to the south can be cut off by snow for six months a year. Nonetheless, the area receives a great deal of sunshine, and the school needs no energy from outside. Passive solar heating has to warm the building, so the main areas of glass face south, and the northern walls against the mountains are made of local masonry whose masses act as thermal flywheels. Daylight provides illumination. Ventilation is natural. Electricity for powering machinery (including the school computers) is provided by photovoltaic arrays; batteries store power for cloudy days.

In the upper Indus, rushing gorges alternate with wide desert-like valleys which, where they are irrigated by river water, become lush piercingly beautiful strips of green cultivation in the middle of grey aridity. But there is not much water to spare and the relatively high consumption of the school (60 litres a day for residents and 10 for students - most unusual in Ladakh) has to be provided by a solar-powered pump from a borehole. Domestic waste water is infiltrated down slotted pipes to provide shading rows of trees. Vegetable plots (part of the educational system) are watered direct from the bore-hole to prevent infection. Lavatories have ventilated improved pit (VIP) latrines in which solar energy collected in black south-facing walls heats a long duct so that air is drawn through the latrines and expelled up the duct above roof level to obviate fly and smell problems. Double chambers allow waste to be converted to humus for use as fertilizer.

Materials and labour are local as far as possible. The granite blocks of external walls were quarried on site and used in more or less traditional ways. The inner leaves of these cavity walls are made of adobe brick-- limited to preserve precious fertile mud from the river banks. Fir structural frame components are imported from local renewable sources. Rafters and the lath-like infill between them are of willow from monastery plantations. The willow is covered with a traditional special earth from a local source within 16km of the site. It was layered and compacted in a day by everyone in the village, who gave time as a contribution to the project. All timber and stone was processed on site.

The second phase of the project will have a junior school, residential court, dining hall and kitchens. It is under construction and should be completed in 2004.

The Druk White Lotus School is a project of the Drukpa Trust -- a British charity under the patronage of the Dalai Lama -- which raised money from trusts, individuals and fund-raising events. The design team, architects and engineers from Arup Associates and Arup, London, worked on a semi-voluntary basis, with one full-t ime member on site during the summer building season.

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Arup Architects & Engineers, London

Project team

Sean Macintosh, James Fleming, Dorothee Richter, Roland Reinardy, Caroline Sohie, Gwenola Kergal, Ian Grace with Duncan Woodburn

Photographs

Caroline Sohie and Roland Reinardy