Nias Island Orphanage
The planning and construction task for the aspiring architects was a multi-purpose building, to serve primarily as an assembly hall, playroom and event space for eighty orphans. The spatial program determined by the sisters of the order also required a small library, a music room, a craft room and the necessary sanitary installations. All in all, the building was to comprise around 200 square meters in floor space.
The building site is situated on a terrain edge in the middle of the children’s village, with the existing buildings spread across a slope with lush vegetation. The access road to the children’s home and the nunnery skirts the building site on the uphill side. On the downhill side, the building site is bounded by a flat playground.
During the design course, all stages of a real-life construction project and all the related responsibilities and consequences were to be taken on by a team of twenty, from the first design sketch to the production of models and detail drawings, and all the way to the execution of all construction work on site by the team itself.
The structural building material available was primarily locally grown timber; at the request of the nuns, the roofing was to be corrugated metal sheets.