Located in the colorful country side of Mae Sot, close to the Thai-Burma border, Kwel Ka Baung school will provide education for 150 kids coming from the neighbouring Karen state.
Conceived under the restriction of an extremely low budget, the school tries to show the community a feasible way to pursue affordable architecture without compromising spatial quality and still mantaining a strong connection to the landscape. The main material is therefore adobe, which responds perfectly to the challenging tropical climate of Mae Sot.
The construction process results as a collaboration between agora architects and a team of Karen workers, who are actively contributing to the design of the building while refining their skills in adobe making. Along with mud bricks, bamboo and eucaliptus have been deployed as light partitions between classrooms and corridor, while the roof trusses are out of second hand timber.
A strong contribution to the construction phase came also from the local community through workshops and from the Canadian volunteering association Casira: during November 2013, for the second year in a row, a team of enthusiastic quebecoise worked side by side with the Karen group and financed generously the whole project.
