Lebanon

An Environmental Youth Center in Mount Lebanon and a Modular School in Ukraine: 8 Educational Facilities Submitted to ArchDaily

This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights educational facilities submitted by the ArchDaily community. From a contextual Earth school in Senegal, to a borderless, collaborative school in Vietnam, this round up of unbuilt projects showcases how architects infused nature with architecture, offering students the chance to engage with the landscape and learn more about their surroundings from their academic institutes. The article also features projects from Lebanon, Switzerland, Armenia, Ukraine, and Greece.

Located in Wadi el Karm, a Mount Lebanese village rich in traditional agriculture and biodiversity, the Agri-youth center for environmental education by ALPHA is set to welcome socially vulnerable urban youth in need of relaxation and wellbeing. Built with an environmentally friendly approach, the center will engage visitors in nature-based leisure activities, as well as in activities that raise awareness in resource management and agroecological practices.

At this school in Hanoi, children from kindergarten to high school can study together. The entire building is a borderless space so that students of various nationalities can cross-borders of education in a natural environment that transcends age boundaries. I hope that the children, who are like seeds with great potential, will mature through their diverse interactions with nature and other people and will grow up and out of this school towards the sky.

The approach and process for design of Terre à Terre was greatly influenced by the philosophy and work of Kakolum, along with understanding the context and sensitive impact of the project on the community. The following were the objectives of the design: Develop buildings as a community resource, facilitate community participation and engagement, ensure the project is socially, culturally, economically and environmentally sustainable – Reduce, reuse, recycle. Based on these, our aim was to design a system, not just a building.

The new school is situated in the north of the site, as far as possible from the street, with a garden between them
acting as a visual and acoustic filter, immersing the building inside a “green island”. The building is supported by 4 big pillars that elevate the 4 concrete wall-beams from the land creating a continuous ground floor open to the landscape. The building has a rectangular plan of 38 m by 66 m and includes both programs (school and gymnasium) joining them by an external atrium.