Studio Lapstrake
Location: Dodoma, Tanzania
Client: Mkutani Village
Collaborators: Engineers without Borders USA, New Hope Tanzania, Safe Habitat
Status: Completed, 2025
The village of Mkutani is a remote, rural community in Tanzania located approximately 65 km east of Dodoma. It is accessed via an unimproved road running 20 km north through arid agricultural land where subsistence agriculture is the staple economy. The vulnerability of these areas to drought and climate-change further has underscored the necessity to generate vocational training and educational infrastructures which support alternative economic avenues that supplement the community’s livelihoods. The village of Mkutani currently houses a primary school in a small compound on its northern boundary which provides education for youth from the surrounding communities. In partnership with Kongwa District officials and local non-profits, EWB USA has undertaken a constellation of projects which target some of the underlying obstacles to providing safe and effective education to the community. Most recently, the need for additional classroom spaces for an expanding campus, and a facility to provide dedicated vocational training for the community and surrounding areas were identified as priorities to be addressed by the construction of a new learning center on the campus grounds.
During community engagement meetings, a site strategy was selected which maximizes prevailing easterly winds to assist in passive ventilation, and frames the entrance to the campus from the main road. This framing is achieved through a central breezeway, which provides a portal through which visitors enter - doubling as an outdoor classroom for learning and space for school performances. A covered veranda along the western length of the center serves as a threshold into the spaces and a place of public gathering which faces the interior campus courtyard. Care was taken to site the learning center in proximity to a prominent acacia tree under which the community holds council meetings-reinforcing its symbolic presence as a place of knowledge and gathering. Inspiration was taken from vernacular strategies employed by local builders. Within the surrounding community, compressed earth blocks are sourced locally to produce dwellings with the thermal mass required to mitigate the large swings in temperature between the heat of the peak dry season and the cool arid nighttime air. Structures frequently employ local plantings to create a localized shade structure which protects the overhead ceiling from solar heat gain. In the learning center this manifests as a doubled roof membrane - with the exterior surface providing an umbrella of shade that can be passively ventilated between the exterior plane and the porous drop-ceiling. The structure is sensitively sited to avoid the need to cut or move any trees, and they are located nearby the structure to further amplify the passive cooling strategies.
The project aspires to a level of sustainability that is equally social, environmental, and economic, with care taken to utilize local labor, building expertise, and materials. The use of a load-bearing concrete frame allows for infill to be composed of locally produced compressed earth blocks. These blocks are produced through a hydraulic press and stabilized with a light cement additive. The modular blocks require no grouting and can be dry jointed, further easing the constructability, replicability, cost, and overall embodied energy. A timber-trussed roof provides generous overhang to protect the walls from driven rain and creates a veranda to the west which completes the courtyard arrangement of the campus and provides a social gathering space centered around the breezeway. A water collection tank is sited on the northern side of the center with a first-flush system that redirects excess collected rainwater into irrigation channels which support the surrounding trees. An ongoing irrigation and agriculture project sited nearby is anticipated to link this system and other nearby water collection reservoirs with a network of clay-drip irrigation pots in order to establish a reciprocal relationship between the architecture and local agriculture.