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Kindergarten Kambodscha

Master Design Studio KIT Karlsruhe Summer 2019

Prof. Dirk E. Hebel, Professorship of Sustainable Construction (ed.), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, 2021

The Swiss aid organisation “Smiling Gecko”, led by Hannes Schmid, aims to help people in Cambodia to start their own businesses and build their own sustainable future. To this end, a community based on agriculture and education is being built. Supported by experts, the people and families living there learn how economic profit can come from cultivating the land and from communal thinking. The organisation’s concept also includes providing children with an adequate and sound school education, starting from an early age. “Smiling Gecko” has therefore asked the Professorship of Sustainable Construction to plan a kindergarten in the area of the organisation in Cambodia near Phnom Penh with a connection to an already existing education campus. The master project in summer 2019 was led by Prof. Dirk E. Hebel and supervised by Manuel Rausch and Daniel Lenz.

In the publication, the students’ results for the design task are presented in summary form. The aim was to give the students an attitude and associated responsibility for the design and construction of a building task. Design decisions should raise questions about the availability of talent and materials, the responsibility of a sustainable use of resources, functionality and respect for social and cultural idiosyncrasies and climatic conditions, and the traditional understanding of craftsmanship, joining principles and processing techniques. Likewise, the longevity, resistance (resilience) and ecological meaningfulness should be discussed.

This combined knowledge was consistently elaborated by all students into an independent, stringent and architecturally as well as aesthetically superior project, which allows the argumentation and the design decisions derived from it to be logically comprehended. The design and construction principles follow a clear causality and result in a project that is specifically tailored to the task.

This publication would not have been possible without the full commitment and creativity of the participating students: Fadim Basev, Konstantin Beck, Elena Boerman, Annkathrin Breitenbach, Anne-Catherine Greiner, Julius Grün, Paulina Hipp, Hanna Sylvie Hoss, Jasmin Link, Katharina Saharov, Alisa Marielle Schneider und Irina Valta.

The design “Kindergarten Kambodscha” was devised by the Professorship of Sustainable Construction (Prof. Dirk E. Hebel, Daniel Lenz, Manuel Rausch) and supported by the Professorships of Building Structures (Prof. Matthias Pfeifer, Daniel Lauterkorn) and Building Physics (Prof. Andreas Wagner) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in summer 2019.

Available at the Professorship of Sustainable Construction: https://nb.ieb.kit.edu