The mud brick house that outlived the concrete one
Omar visits a village near Luxor where a mud brick house built in 1952 is cool, dry and standing, while the concrete house next door from 1998 is cracking and unbearable in summer.
Designing a school for 48 degrees
0:00 / 1:13
Sample the first 60 seconds free. Sign up free or log in to hear the whole episode.
Show notes
Designing a school for 48 degrees
Omar opens up his own studio's work: a primary school for 1,200 children in a town where summer temperatures reach 48 degrees and the electricity is unreliable. He is joined by the project's engineer, who disagreed with him about almost every window.
- Orientation first: why the plan rotated 30 degrees after the first site visit
- Courtyards, wind catchers and the argument about glass
- Keeping 40 children in a classroom at 30 degrees without air conditioning
- What the teachers asked for that the architects had not thought of
- Cost, and the three things that were cut
The school opened last September. Omar will visit again in summer and report back.
Transcript
Welcome back to Load Bearing Walls. I am Omar El-Sherbiny, and this week I am breaking my own rule and talking about a building my studio designed, because the problem it had to solve is one I think about constantly. A primary school for twelve hundred children in a town in Upper Egypt where the summer reaches forty eight degrees and the power cuts out most afternoons. With me is the engineer on the project, who will tell you that I wanted too many windows and that he was right, and I will tell you that he was mostly right. We talk about rotating the whole plan after the first site visit, about courtyards and wind catchers, about keeping forty children comfortable without air conditioning, and about the three things we had to cut to stay in budget. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
Open as text