Dehli’s Social Design Collective win a global award for architecture - a school that rebuilds itself, no matter the crisis
In our search for democratic and community innovation, we find much to be inspired by from India - whether it’s neighbourocracy, their water revolution, happiness schools, resilient communities, mapping urban biodiversity, or fearless art collectives.
We’re delighted that this year’s (2020) winner of the Design Museum’s Beazley Award for architecture (announced late January) has brought us to discover the Delhi-based Social Design Collaborative, responsible for the winning project but so much more besides.
Their category winner is called ModSkool. There’s a short embedded documentary above, but briefly from the Design Museum’s website:
ModSkool [phase 1 and phase 2] is a school that is designed to be easily erected and dismantled in response to forced evictions of farming communities on the floodplains of the Yamuna river in India. [More background from this Reuters report].
First built in 2017 in less than three weeks by students, school staff, parents and local volunteers, the school was dismantled one year later due to land-ownership issues. The new school, relocated further south, was held together with the form of weave used for a charpoy, a multifunctional piece of furniture traditionally used as a daybed.
The school’s design mirrors its teaching methods, which focus on a holistic education that includes issues of sustainability.
From a recent article in the Indian Express, Social Design Collective’s Swati Janu describes how this achievement has given them ambition to develop the Yamuma riverfront further:
For Janu, this is just the beginning. Currently, she’s approaching the Dehli Development Authority (DDA) to present alternative imaginations to the riverfront [see their vision here, and image below].
“In 2008, DDA had drawn up plans for the Yamuna riverfront which included biodiversity parks and jogging tracks, and sure we do need that but will it be at the cost of sustainable food production? Many cities across the world are adopting urban farming, especially in the global south, in Latin America and Asia too.
More on this vision here
“In a country like ours, the urban and the rural are intertwined. We need to find ways to ensure our cities can integrate both these aspects. While they may still allow urban farming, there is no room for the farmer in our pursuit of the world-class city,” says Janu.
She goes back to post-Independence accounts of how farmer cooperatives could develop tracts of land along the Yamuna on short leases, given by the Delhi Improvement Trust, today’s DDA. Over time, as ambition and approach changed, evictions followed and with that removal of farming communities along the riverfront.
“This project is about education and questions on participation and right to the city. The school was only incidental,” says Janu.
More here. Indeed, Social Design Collective’s wider work does indeed focus on “education, questions of participation and right to the city”. See below (click on caption for more information):
