Raramuri School: The open and adaptable school

1. Setting the Scene

a. A school for a Rarámuri community

The Rarámuri communities live mostly in rural settlements and small villages scattered across the Sierra Tarahumara, in the northeast of Mexico. They speak their own language and have maintained a strong identity and vibrant cultural traditions through over five centuries of contact with the mestizo and Spanish population. They are subsistence farmers, but recently have also relied on handcrafting and elaboration of furniture and music instruments. Still, their resources are scarce. Institutions as the UNDP have ranked the levels of human development in the region below the national average, and comparable with the lowest levels in Africa or Asia. Rarámuri children often work from very young ages, either in urban or rural settings. Only a small percentage of them are enrolled in primary education, and very few expect to continue at a medium or professional level.

To make it possible for Rarámuri families to send their children to school, boarding schools were built across the region to provide children with accommodation and education. Actually, in the Sierra Tarahumara there are around 108 boarding schools most of them attended by Rarámuri children. Though, in most of the cases they fulfil their role as educators, boarding schools are considered a necessary evil as they subtract the kids from their families along with their traditions and culture. Most of the schools do not integrate the culture of Rarámuris in their education program, neither their language nor the interests of their communities.

b. Partner description.
In this context, some schools have shown an interest to improve their curriculum and internal organization. The Antonio de Oreña School is one of those. This elementary school was one of the first schools founded in 1907 in the region. Initially, the school’s purpose was to teach only the boarding school’s kids, which are only girls. However, school administrators realized the important need of opening the school for the children of the village where the school is located, disregarding their sex and race. Current enrolment is 140 students; girls and boys aged 3 to 12 from the village and remote areas. Incorporated in the Ministry of Education of Mexico, the school has the status of private but as it is managed by a religious organization, it charges a student fee equivalent to 3-5 dollars per month. However, payment is waived for those that cannot afford it, which are usually most of the Rarámuri families.

c. Location of the project.
The Antonio de Oreña elementary school is situated in the village of Sisoguichi, in the municipality of Boycona, in Chihuahua, Mexico. It is placed on a dry but densely vegetated region in the forest of the Sierra Tarahumara. Temperatures are extreme and range from 31.1?C during the summer and -17.8?C during the rest of the year. Water is a limited resource in the region. Annual rainfall is around 68 cms/year; most of it comes during the summer. Yet, the coldness of the weather conditions is exacerbated by problems such as massive deforestation, frequent droughts and climate change, forcing almost every closed space to rely in the use of heating during most of the year.

d. Need.
As the school has began a process of improvement of its curriculum, it also has the purpose to built two new more classrooms, as more children are enrolling each year. The current building has proved to be resilient enough as it has been running for more than a century. However, the building structure offers limited capacity to adapting itself to needs and demands of a 21-century school. The indoor lighting is very precarious as windows are too small to offer adequate natural lighting. Most of the classrooms rely in external electrical installations, and turn on the lights all day.

Storage space is another issue. Classroom space has been used for storage purposes such as wood, old books and other material; reducing de area for attending lectures to a quite limited and crowded space. This situation prevents them of having a flexible seating arrangement. Moreover, the adequate storage of teaching aids is important too, as rural education needs to complement the lack of resources that living in an urban area offers. For instance, most of the kids have never seen a streetlight or a factory. This teaching aids range from maps, drawings and posters, recently, computers have proved to be highly useful for showing maps, photographs and online-courses. In 2007, an NGO donated a set of computer and a projector that is shared by all grades.

Since demand for space continues to increase, teachers and administrators search to build incrementally one classroom at the time. However, while addressing funding issues, administrators have been forced to set up classrooms in the basement of the building where conditions are even more precarious and classrooms unsafe.

2. Involving the school into Architecture (Engaging the School)

a. The students

The process of engaging the students in the classroom design process consisted in two workshops, several informal meetings, and a site measuring session. The school chose to work with the fourth grade students, as they were currently taking classes in a basement room, and did have a clear understanding of the importance of having an adequate classroom.

The first workshop was aimed at actively introduce the students in the task of defining “what a good classroom is”, exploring their needs and desires. Students were asked in what they thought a classroom should be; they needed to consider whether or not the basement room fulfilled their requirements. Interestingly, some students agreed that the room was a classroom because it had a blackboard and student chairs. Others were not sure as they knew that the room was used for storage of the boarding school in the past. By asking this question, students defined the elements that make the difference between a room and a classroom. Later on, we asked them to evaluate each of those elements separately. We gave them paper sheets, green and red, to identify the elements of the classroom that they liked, those they did not, or those they wanted to change. Initially, they had to write down the name and once they have done that, they had to go across the room and paste them on the element. As students acted out the problem, they were focused on the instructional task of evaluating the room. The role of the architect was to set the rules and procedures for establishing the task.

Consequently, the architect asked them to write on the blackboard two lists with the elements they had pointed out, and to explain them one by one. This served to see whether or not there was controversy in defining if an element was satisfactory for the class. Still, this was only an evaluation of the current classroom, so it was necessary to define the most important elements in order to take them into account for the design of a new classroom. This activity puzzled them because they were restrained to choose only up to five elements, forcing them to prioritize their needs. Surprisingly, students selected only elements from the list of the things they did not liked because after all, those elements were the more essential. To end this first exercise, the students were asked to make a drawing of how the ideal classroom should be while thinking in the lists they had just made, and prioritizing the five elements they had pointed out. The drawing could be either the layout of the classroom or its façade. In order to this, the architect explained how architects interpret drawings and give them to the construction builders.

The second workshop was built upon the experience of the first one, as they had identified the elements that make a classroom and which were the most important for them; in this sense students were asked to build a model of their ideal classroom. They were guided to consider the three lists and to include a final one, which was done naming the activities they usually do in a classroom. In this process, the students explore how can they shape their needs and desires and transform them into a small-scale model. The aim of the activity was to explore the components of a classroom, and to make students place them in the classroom according to their expectations and sense of space. As part of the exercise, students were asked to work in teams, so they would have to understand that the space they were designing was collective, and they had to reach an agreement on how they wanted it within their teams. The architect’s role was of facilitator giving details about how building components work.

The final phase of the workshop for the students was to explain their model, its concepts and its elements. In some cases, students where shy about explaining their own designs, but since they were explained that their inputs were going to be seriously considered for the design of the new classroom they explained their projects to the rest of the class, and some of them even in front of a recording camera.

b. Teachers

The engagement with teachers consisted in a series of interviews about matters related with the school management and the functioning of the classrooms. Teachers were also asked to interpret and evaluate the work that the students made in the workshops, in order to perceive their opinion upon the issues that the students had identified.

It could be said that the most important need that came out from the interaction with teachers was the heating of the classrooms, which is usually provided by a makeshift wood stove located in the middle of the room. The first issue was the limitations that heating imposes on the available space, as neither furniture nor teaching material can be placed in proximity of it. It also involves safety issues since depending on the wood it’s used, vapours are more or less intensive making the environment unsafe and uncomfortable. Although teachers try to turn it on the shortest time possible to avoid children getting sick due to temperature differences between the inner and outer environment, still, heating is indispensable during a large part of the year.

Among other issues was the current school furniture, which limits the possibility to engage students in teamwork, as furniture is too small and does not provide enough space to work. Other need was the storage space for teaching material and student’s books, as some of the students live in the boarding school and do not have the possibility of taking with them all their material after classes. In the case of the youngest children, teachers mentioned the necessity of having a small washbasin inside the classroom. Both the lighting and ventilation issues were mentioned, as visibility is limited in winter, and classrooms are very suffocating during summer.

Some features teachers mentioned that it will be ideal to include in the new school classrooms the possibility of having larger spaces that allow the class to change the seating arrangement in alternative ways (different from rows); and to have access to a computer and a projector since materials such as maps, pictures and videos are essential to teaching lessons and they are scarce and very difficult to access to them in a printed version.

c. Defining the program

In accordance with the expansion works already planned by the school as well as the current space need for the increasing number of students, it come to a decision in agreement with the school staff that the institution needs two new classrooms with two small toilets. The building should have a space for storing teaching aids or personal items, as well as maintenance equipment such as: cleaning devices, wood or others. The specific site for the construction was decided to be in the northwest corner of the school since it is the only empty spot in the plot plan and is currently used as an improvised children’s playground area. It was decided that the building placement should be coherent with the others already in place in the existing school buildings and have an option for expansion if more classrooms were needed in the future.

Defining the architectural design guidelines was the synthesis of the workshops, interviews, personal observation and critical analysis. It was converged that the new classrooms should address the following concerns:

Environmentally sustainability: The new classroom should address the extreme weather conditions and water shortage.

Innovation of the physical form of classroom: the adaptation of traditional techniques to modern building solutions and the integration of a new approach to teaching in rural communities.

Cultural identity: The classroom should reflect Rarámuri values and interests as education, especially in boarding schools, should strengthen the richness of their culture at a time when modernization and progress are pressing this indigenous group.

Affordability: The economic resources of the school as well as the community of Sisoguichi are scarce. The project should be feasible and consider the post construction sustainability and its maintenance.

3. The Proposal

a. An innovative vernacular idea

The architectural proposal promotes a vernacular typology in which traditional local architecture and cultural lifestyle is transferred into an innovative design that relates to the already existing school buildings with the usage of local materials such as stone adobe and wood along with traditional construction methods in order to generate an affordable and sustainable building.

List of the local available materials used in the project
- Stone for walls
- Adobe for walls and insulation
- Corrugated metal for roofing
- Corrugated plastic for roofing in green house
- Wood for roof structure, window, door frames and other furniture
- Gravel stones for subsoil filter and floor insulation

The spatial design consists in providing six different learning spaces:

- Classroom area
- Student space
- Entrance hall
- Medicinal Greenhouse
- Virtual classroom
- Open classroom

The different combinations of all these spaces create adaptable learning environments where students can experience multiple classroom arrangements, shifting from the traditional idea of four walls with a chalkboard.

b. Going green

The collaboration with teachers and students was important to prioritize and understand the importance of designing an environmentally sustainable classroom as an actual requirement rather than as a means to future prevention. The harsh weather conditions additionally to the economical constraints were taken into consideration in order to address the 3 most important issues: extreme cold winters, hot and dry summers, and water shortage.

I. Heating the classroom in winter: The economic constraints mean that solutions have to be provided by nature and the school should be able to sustain its operation and maintenance. In this context, the natural sunlight is the main source of heating, therefore the use of passive systems are taken into consideration; the building is orientated to the south having a greenhouse as a sun heat catchment area, as well as top windows to provide lighting and heating to the northern area of the classroom. The insulation of the building is given by traditional materials such as thick adobe walls. Additionally, the ceilings, made of a layer of mud and straws between wooden panels, create an air chamber in the roofing area. In order to reduce the Municipal electric consumption the project considers photovoltaic panels in the upper wall at the centre of the building. The high wall is specifically designed with an inclination of 60 degrees in order to receive more sunlight during the winter days.

After considering several alternatives, the use of a wood stove as heating continued to be the more adequate option since the school cannot afford any type of fuel, and the cost of introducing a gas or electric system is simply too high. However, it is suggested the use of the “Lorena’s Stove” instead of the currently used type. This innovative stove helps to reduce the impact of wood deforestation, as this heating device only uses smaller pieces of wood and dry leaves found on the ground in the woodlands. The stove, made with adobe bricks, can be integrated with the walls and built at the same time with them. Also, the stove’s heat is used to transfer warm air under the floor, by integrating small channels of warm air combined with a layer of gravel stone under the floor.

II. Cooling the classroom in summer: Even if the season with extreme high temperatures is relatively short, significant comfort can be brought to the students during those months by the windows design. The aperture of the windows in the front are strategically positioned to direct the dominant winds from the south west enabling a cross ventilation system. The top windows complement the system, since they serve as a hot air exit point. It is important to mention the promotion of green spaces in the front will help to moisturize the environment during the hot season. In addition, the already mentioned insulation of walls and ceilings work in summer as well as in winter.

III. Water management: Shortage of water is a big issue in the local context; therefore the school can be used as a teaching facility to have a more responsible use of water. The project uses the gutters to harvest rainwater into an underground deposit. Thereafter, water is pumped to a smaller water container located on the top of the toilet roof used to serve only the washing basins. Grey water will be collected and reused in the greenhouse area and outdoor green areas after been filtered by traditional underground gravel filter.Dry toilets are also suggested as a clean and environmentally friendly solution to significantly reduce the use of water. An adaptation from the Vietnamese double-vault latrine is proposed; known also as “letrinas aboneras secas”. Besides contributing to the reduction of water dependence, the latrine also provides fertilizer for green areas. Other advantages include the fact that it requires no digging, uses local materials, does not pollute soil or water, and produces fewer microorganisms since the latrine has a two-chamber system that separates urine and defecation. After using it, wood ash or a mixture of soil and lime is placed in the chamber to avoid odours. Indeed, the toilet works in parallel with the Lorena’s stove as the ashes produced by the stove serve the dry toilets.

c. Looking towards the future

Even if the classroom has a traditional construction process, it is still fully equipped to address the current needs of a 21 century school by having an area for the virtual classroom equipped with iUnika laptops, as they are cheap, solar charged and include free software. In addition there are multifunctional mobile chalkboards that can be used for projections too. It is also important to point out that the classroom seats furniture has been designed to adapt to different seating plans.

However the project makes emphasis in the versatility of the learning spaces as they can adapt to different classroom arrangements and locations. For instance, space can be managed to have larger classrooms or to integrate the outdoor yard for special events, or even as an alternative room for a library or an office. In order to give the classroom a particular identity related to the current users, the project enables students and teachers to adapt the student area based on their particular needs. This area’s main function is for storage of teaching aids and individual lockers, it can be manipulated by using the mobile shelves, and serve as an element for expression enabling students to use their creativity in a three-dimensional space.

d. The face of Identity

The engagement with students and teachers was vital to understand the importance of the Raramuri culture and how the classroom should provide a sense of ownership to all users; therefore the classroom should celebrate their culture and transfer it into contemporary education.

Firstly, the project supports the Raramuri concepts of cooperative and respectful lifestyle by enabling spaces where students will have to work together in order to create and maintain their own student space, the flexibility of the spaces enables students to search and find the best learning environments. By having an open classroom with no locks in their lockers, all the scholar materials are available for students and teachers in the shelves, as there is no space for locked storage, the classroom will develop collective sense of ownership and mutual respect.

Secondly, Raramuri’s culture is vibrant and colourful, coming from traditions where movement and free body are always present: their origins as semi nomadic settlements, their strong eclectic religious beliefs which they express with dances and music, as well as their traditional sport game which consists in running long distances with a ball. All these reasons make it impossible to conceive the traditional closed classroom as the best learning environment for the Raramuris. In this sense, the project plays with the movement of the students and flexibility of spaces, including the outdoor yard which can be as effective as the closed spaces for teaching, whenever the weather conditions are appropriate.

Lastly, Raramuris origin’s comes from a strong agricultural tradition, it is an important factor to reflect in the project the strong ties they have with “mother earth” and nature, and the importance to respect and value it. The project includes the concept where teaching can take place outdoors by opening the classroom to the yard and promote agricultural education in the medicinal green house garden and in the terraced yards which resembles traditional Tarahumara sierra’s cultivation sites.

All these aspects added to the current initiative to improve the educational curriculum in the Tarahumara region, promotes intercultural-bilingual education that seeks to enable the students and the community to express themselves and feel proud about their culture, language and traditions; supporting the notion of creating an heterogeneous society and learning for the future.

e. Can it be feasible?

Both teachers and school administrators mentioned the commitment of the community of Sisoguichi with the improvement of the school. As the school has been working in the region for more than a century, generations of families have studied there and are keen to contribute to the improvement of their school. It is possible to consider that people might be willing to help during their available time to build the new classrooms. This sense of cooperative participation surely will trigger community based projects which can be transferred into other entrepreneur activities.

In addition, the Antonio de Oreña School has recently joined the Innovation Group of the UNESCO, in the Educational Rarámuri Project, which pursuits to integrate matters of interest of the local community to the educational program. Some of the components of the program are the study of the Raramuri language and indigenous rights, the introduction to alternative agricultural techniques or the promotion of Raramuri teachers, which will be instructed members of the community. The classroom project fits into the ideals of the UNESCO’s program and can be a pilot project expanding the program into infrastructure.

Finally, the project intends to promote the economic activities in the local community; the reason for creating a vernacular design based on local materials and construction techniques is to promote the local carpenters, builders, artisans, handcrafters and technicians. Therefore the local knowledge will be essential to produce the adobe bricks, wood frames, school wooden furniture, window frames, school desks, chalkboard and landscape works. All the building elements will be built on site with the community’s workforce, promoting the local labour and generating multiplying economic effects in the rest of the community.

4. Lessons from the field

a. The replicability of the classroom design

Factors such as orientation, topography and accessibility considerably affect the replication of a project. The Raramuri classroom intends to be a design that can be replicated across the Sierra Tarahumara. It searches to function as a duplex unit, which incrementally can form a school by placing these units around a central yard or plaza. The purpose of having a duplex unit is that a solely classroom cannot provide enough flexibility as the duplex unit does. In addition, it was considered that in a rural context, having scattered classroom units instead of a large big unit of classrooms was more suitable to the context and the Raramuri way of living.

b. The importance of participation

The importance of designing the classroom in a participatory approach was essential to understand the basic needs of the school and the complexity of working with education in rural and cultural diverse contexts. The engagement with the students, teachers and school staff was a fundamental tool for the designing process and even considering the young age of the students, their knowledge and opinions were seriously taken into consideration in order to address their educational necessities and provide an effective learning environment.

c. Architecture as an agent of education

Working with students at a young age during the engagement workshops was an appealing activity to promote human development using architecture as a tool. Students were encouraged to explore their creativity and understand the basic concepts of spatial arrangements and building elements; they also learned to make relevant diagnosis and analysis which can help them to prioritise needs; all these tools can be transferred into other activities. As designers it was a very satisfying practice and hopefully this experience will lead one or two students into an activity related with the build environment.

Location