Description

The school is located in the village of Shey, approximately 16 kilometres from the main town, Ley, in the centre of the Ladakh valley. Sometimes known as ‘Little Tibet’, Ladakh is an ancient kingdom set high in the Indian Himalayas, close to Tibet’s western border. This remote high altitude desert is cut off by snow for around six months of the year, with winter temperatures dropping as low as -30 degrees C in some areas. In summer the hot sun and snowmelt bring the rich fertile valleys alive.

The population is mainly Buddhist, with a minority of Muslims and Christians; for centuries, monasteries were the centres of learning and the focus for the community’s practical and spiritual needs. The Drukpa Trust, a UK-registered charity under the patronage of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, has initiated the creation of the Druk White Lotus School, which will eventually cater for 750 mixed pupils from nursery age to 18 years. Although the project is a local initiative, it has an international context, with funding from charitable donations in the UK and Europe as well as the local community. Arup Associates and Arup, the engineering arm of the London based consultancy, have developed an environmental strategy, which has wider implications for sustainable design research and practice. Arup had several reasons for becoming involved in such a specialist community project located in this remote part of the world. When Arup first visited Ladakh at the Trust’s invitation in 1997, they were impressed by the ambition of the project and by the need for such a school locally. When findings of field research evolved as the design progressed, it became clear that this work could contribute significantly to the development of appropriate building technologies both here and elsewhere in the world. Every year Arup gives leave of absence to an engineer or architect from the design team to be resident on site, to act as an ‘ambassador’ for the Trust and to assist the local construction team and client committee. The project was presented at the September 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

Located close to the River Indus and its surrounding irrigated fields, according to the designers, the gently south-sloping, south-facing site will be steadily developed from open desert into a humane, well-scaled environment for children and teachers, this being an important resource within which the local community can work comfortably. The environmental strategy takes particular advantage of the unique solar position of the high altitude (3,700 metres) site to be energy self-sufficient. In addition the site strategy aims to ensure an entirely self-regulating system in terms of water and waste management. There will be gardens and extensive tree planting as a result of this irrigation system; the related water infrastructure is drawn from a single borehole by a solar-powered pump. With the site encircled by peaks rising to over 7,000 metres and overlooked by two important monasteries, the master plan aims to achieve a unique sense of harmony with its surroundings. The complex is organised within a nine square grid arrangement and surrounding circle of a mandala, a symbolic figure of particular religious significance. There are four principal areas, interconnected by way of a spine type route but not occupying the full extent of the site. The first is the site entrance and bus drop-off from the road to the south, which gives pedestrians access to the second, the daytime teaching areas. The third element along the spine is the residential accommodation for some pupils and staff rising to the north. The fourth area, comprising the water and energy infrastructure, is located separately alongside a service track to the west.

Typically, single-storey buildings are arranged around a series of primary and secondary routes in a plan which is not unlike a small village or local monastery, tightly planned and enclosed around shaded courtyards, in stark contrast to the surrounding open desert landscape devoid of shelter from the bleak conditions. Within the daytime teaching area, which is orientated 30 degrees from south towards east to favour the morning sun, stands the recently completed nursery and infant school courtyard. Also accommodated in the daytime teaching area will be three further teaching courtyards for the junior and senior schools, the computer and science laboratories, a library and community resource facility, art studios, an open-air assembly courtyard and a large multi-purpose hall. To the north along the residential spine will be a medical clinic, vocational training workshops, dining hall, kitchens and the residential accommodation. The nursery and infant school provides three large teaching/play studios for nursery and kindergarten years, two further classrooms for year 1 children, and a small suite of rooms for the head of schools and administration. These spaces are organised in two single-storey buildings arranged around an open, landscaped courtyard that will be used for external teaching during summer months and may eventually be covered with awnings made from parachute fabric, which is readily available locally. A water point is provided for wet play, and deciduous trees are planted for shading. Just outside the teaching courtyard there are two innovative, solar assisted, dry latrine buildings. All classrooms are entered from the courtyard via a lobby (containing children’s lockers for shoes), which provides a thermal buffer. The courtyard is planted to provide a canopy covering of foliage with wet play and external teaching areas beneath both solid and flexible coverings to extend teaching space and reflect the extreme temperature conditions across the climatic cycle. Each classroom has a quiet warm corner with a small stove on a stone floor. There are timber floors everywhere else, and white-painted mud rendered walls are provided to maximise teaching flexibility in clear uncluttered spaces. Each courtyard has a pair of detached solar-assisted VIP (ventilated improved pit) latrines arranged along an external walkway crossing one open end of the courtyard.

The key aspects governing the structural design were earthquake loading, durability and appropriateness. The kindergarten buildings have cavity walls on three sides with granite block in mud mortar as the outer leaf and traditional mud brick masonry for the inner leaf; this gives increased thermal performance and durability compared to the rendered mud brick walls commonly used. The heavy mud roof is supported by a timber structure independent of the walls to provide the earthquake stability. The large spans needed in the classrooms, combined with the open glazed south-facing façade and the high weight of the roof makeup, required large timber cross sections and steel connections to ensure that they resist seismic loads and to warrant life safety in the case of an earthquake. These were difficult to procure locally, so the structural framing plan and connection details for the future phases have been altered to reduce timber section sizes.

The client’s brief to develop a model school was ambitious, not only in terms of ‘hardware’ such as energy and site infrastructure, buildings, material resource use, but also in ‘soft skills’ such as building up competency in the local project management team, establishing a cost database and in optimising the use of local resources. All these initiatives aim to support the whole project as a demonstration of a new approach to teaching in such a unique rural community. Ultimately, this is far more than a school in the conventional sense, it is more of a village, with everything designed to complement the major infrastructure initiatives, water and energy management in the most positive way.

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Originally published in: Mark Dudek, Schools and Kindergartens: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2015.