Katumbiri Kindergarten

UNPAR

Project idea

Katumbiri is a preschool building in the Arunika Waldorf school complex in Bandung, Indonesia. Arunika Waldorf School is an independent school with the waldorf educational concept. Katumbiri itself is intended to accommodate the education of early age children (Embun Group) and Kindergarten (Katumbiri Group) . The building was designed by the team under the guidance of lecturers of Parahyangan Catholic University Department of Architecture and is a collaboration with Ode Architects (Mr. Gosha Muhammad) who designed the master plan of the Arunika Waldorf school complex.

Project description

Following up the design and construction workshop conducted by Parahyangan Catholic University School of Architecture, the team together with Arunika Waldorf school, developed the design of a small school building to accommodate the kindergarten class. Arunika Waldorf school named the building “Katumbiri”, which means “Rainbow” in Sundanese. The design team applied curved shape representing a part of rainbow and a teardrop plan representing morning dew as the main expression of the building. The university and the school see that a modular bamboo construction would be applied to suit the budget and time constraint of the project.

The design brief is a classroom building in Arunika-Waldorf School, Cibeunying, Bandung. The designed classroom was expected to accommodate the following functions: learning space for approximately 15 pre-school kids whose ages range from 3 to 6 year old, desks for eating and communal activities, small kitchen and working space for the teachers. Working space for the teachers was planned to be situated on the second floor.

Multisensory approach that was expected to be learned and applied in the design, was based on teaching method applied in Waldorf School, which encompasses 12 senses that determine how a child interacts with other people and the environment. These senses include four lower senses (sense of touch, sense of life, sense of movement, sense of balance); four middle senses (sense of sight, sense of odor, sense of taste, sense of temperature); and four higher senses (sense of hearing, sense of language, sense of thought, sense of individuality). Katumbiri Preschool focuses on developing the four lower senses for the basic development of children up to 40 months old.

This building consists of a bamboo structure and a separate brick wall structure. Building design applied a structural module called Bumi Awi Kabula Kabale (BAKK), which can be classified as Adaptive Truss Structure. This structural module is an invention resulted from research conducted by lecturers in the Faculty of Engineering, UNPAR, which appears as a folded structure made from bamboo that can be easily assembled, transported and relocated to generate various forms and sizes of buildings accommodating diverse functions in different sites.
Walls serving as an enclosure of the building are separated from the bamboo structure to ensure that the rigid concrete wall and the slightly moving bamboo structure don't share the same load.

Technical information

Bumi Awi Kabula Kabale (BAKK) is an adaptive and foldable bamboo frame structure module. BAKK can be utilised to erect simple buildings with simple construction system; it can be easily and rapidly fabricated, transported and installed.
The application of this structure is expected to generate a wide variety of building forms and dimensions.

“Bumi Awi’ consists of two Sundanese words, “Bumi” (which means house or shelter) and “Awi” (which refers to bamboo). “Kabula kabale” was derived from Sundanese words of wisdom “Kudu Bisa Kabula Kabale”, which promotes that people should be able to adapt or adjust themselves according to the contexts. Therefore, “Bumi Awi Kabula Kabale” transforms the intangible cultural value into tangible matter through the application of adaptable and adjustable bamboo structure that can correspond to limited land, different fuctions and diverse individual needs and wants.

The structure suits the project’s affordability and construction time constraint. The modules are built in the school and shipped to the site. The folding system makes it easy to assemble in short amount of time and can be adjust to the design.