Designing a Boarding School for Girls with an approach on Humanitarian Architecture in the Village of Shoorab located in Shiraz

Hafez university of Shiraz

Project idea

Education is essential for the individual and the community, so the design of educational spaces is of particular importance. Given that a quarter of the population of the country is rural, attention to educational infrastructure in rural areas is essential. However, there are distant and deprived areas in the country that do not meet the earliest educational needs, and contradicts the concept of educational justice as one of the most basic needs of a community. The main goal of this research is the design of a boarding school for girls with an approach on Humanitarian architecture.
"Humanitarian architecture is improving the welfare and happiness of a population through the art and practice of designing the built environment that the population occupies. Through this process, humanitarian architecture can alleviate suffering and transform conditions into collectively preferred ones; it acts to create a built environment that is for the betterment of society."

The subject of this project is the design of a boarding school for girls, along with buildings such as a dormitory, dining hall, library and other service spaces. The school operates in two ways: boarding school and central village's school.
The objectives of this project are:
- Identification of humanitarian values in deprived rural areas
- Sustainable school design through climate-based architecture
- Reduce the costs of building and maintaining the school by using a simple and inexpensive architecture with native and accessible materials.
- Saving the cooling and heating energy of the school with the use of simple and inactive solar systems.

Project description

The site of this project is located in Shoorab Village. Shoorab village is located 60 kilometers southwest of Shiraz. This area consists of six nearby villages and a large number of dispersed villages. shoorab's climate is a local steppe climate. There is little rainfall throughout the year. According to Köppen and Geiger, this climate is classified as BSk. The average annual temperature is 17.2 °C in Kavar. About 292 mm of precipitation falls annually.
This area has not made any progress over time and has always been deprived. People in this area have a hard life because of low income. There are 239 students at the various levels in shoorab. There are only elementary schools in this area. For this reason, higher-level students are forced to leave the village or to discontinue their studies.

Technical information

The project consists of six parts: school, teacher's house, caretaker, restaurant, library and dormitory. The site of project is selected according to the centrality of the village relative to neighboring villages. Buildings are located on the site with a central courtyard. Independence of each space was the most important factor in placing blocks on the site.
Due to the semi-arid climate of this area, it should be of great importance in designing climate solutions. The most optimal form for this climate is the forms that have the lowest external levels of their volume. On the other hand, The depth of the building should be such that the sun is well received during cold weather. Rectangular and square shapes shaped somewhat in the east-west direction and formed around a courtyard can be suitable.
The elongation of the forms, in the eastern-western direction, makes the building less exposed to afternoon heat and the building is protected against inappropriate western winds. Some of the buildings are built below the level of the ground, which in addition to creating confidentiality, functional separation of buildings and making the spaces more attractive, the interior spaces of the buildings are colder in the summer and warmer in the winter. Deposited yards are also better protected against adverse winds.
The north, east and west facades have the smallest opening, and the southern facade is the main source of light, heat and vision. Indentation and depth of view reduce the amount of light and heat in the summer and decrease the thermal exchange between the outside and inside.
The landscape design of this school is a continuous and unified structure of trees, shrubs and hedges, artificial hills, small farming fields, and playgrounds that interconnect buildings and provide a coherent understanding of the project.
The following are factors for the formation of the landscape:
• Link with nature and landscapes
• The role of motion in space perception
• Creating diversity while integrating
• The perception of buildings and landscapes through the creation of movement
• Manage the scale of the spaces through niches and slopes
• School and village affiliation at the front of the school's public green space
The building's plan should be in such a way that it can be implemented with the conventional construction method in the region and cost-effective construction. Therefore, the result is a simple organization with which the spaces are optimally dimensioned and modularly arranged together.
In this project, a variety of passive systems such as direct absorption, ceiling lightning, greenhouse with trombwall, enclosed buildings and light shelves have been used.