Eco School

A community school for children, set in the dry foothills of Tiruvannamalai.

The brief was simple and the budget was thin. The structure works in compressed-earth blocks made on site by the people who would lay them. The roof is a sequence of brick vaults - a tectonic system that needs no formwork beyond a guide line and lets the masons read the geometry off the wall.

The classrooms open onto a shaded verandah; the verandah opens onto the grove. The building is meant to weather slowly, in the same direction as the trees around it. Completed in 2022.