Here in the Philippines, Filipinos believe that the best gift one parent can give to their children is education. And what’s one way to best achieve and instill such birthright? The design team is one with the belief to provide the future leaders of our nation with the most apt and equipped environment conducive to learning and cognition. A second home to children which will integrate holistic development in each individual. A setting where they can not only enhance their intelligence and capabilities, but can express and simulate their own homes into.

Back in 1961, a baranggay captain once pursued a dream of providing his locality a venue to enrich the youngsters’ minds and abilities. He then wrote a letter to an entrepreneur who was kind enough to donate half of his land, about 10,090 sqm, for this endeavor. Thus naming the school after him, the Santiago Syjuco Memorial School, established and founded in June 4 of the same year, and located in Villanueva Street, Baranggay Ibaba in the city of Malabon. To date, the school has a population of twenty-seven (27) students in the Kindergarten Department and 1,010 students in the Elementary with a faculty of twenty-six (26); an institution with a teacher-student ratio of 1:40.

What interested the design team to help this school is the continuous eagerness and fervor of the local authorities and local academicians to encourage the students and children to learn, despite the fact that students tend to drop out as they progress to the next grade level. The design team empathizes with their advocate to promote education to the young generation. The school officials entice the children by distributing sacks of rice per school year to the families of each child in exchange for the kid’s attendance in school. Still, even with this way of support, the children lose their appetite for learning by middle of the school year and some never get to finish elementary at all.

Armed with curiosity and the willingness to help, the design team then observed and documented the school’s surroundings and found out one of the key issues, if not the main per se, in the children’s disinterest in going to school.

Flooding. Baha to local people.

Situated in a low and depressed, flat area adjacent to Manila Bay, the town is constantly submerged in water, usually knee-deep due to the overflowing of the bay during high tide, and sometimes even reaching up to an adult’s waist during rainy season. The area is also consistently storm-stricken, which again contributes to flooding. The area then serves as a basin of salt water and flood water making the local people travel by boat and balsa (an indigenous water transportation made of bamboos and ropes) to prevent health risks and hazards.

Aside from these consequences which hinder the students to attend school, flood has caused the school’s main building to be declared as condemned by the local government not only due to its old age, but because of structural instability. Much of its beams, walls, and ceilings, of which are all wooden, have been infested with anay or termites. The wooden floorings along hallways and in the classrooms have had holes ever since. Window glasses are mostly shattered and wooden jalousies are mostly cracked and broken. There has also been a collection of water at the rear of the buildings, which according to the school officials, has never been dried out even during summer. Furthermore, the main grounds of the school where the supposed flag and march ceremonies are to be held has never been utilized as such, due to the accumulated water. Lastly, the school’s open-air gymnasium has now been utilized and converted into classrooms divided only by wooden planks and blackboard due to the unavailability of venues for teaching.

Thus, as young designers with a unified goal of promoting sustainable and efficient environments especially for academic and institutional development, the design team has been inspired to facilitate and extend assistance to this school by equipping it with a sustainable design of a classroom to which the children can best relate their activities to and which will stir their desire to learn. The very main issue the design team hopes to address is how to entice the children to attend school and finish Primary Level by way of arranging a setting that answers one of the main problems of the school, that is, flooding; and at the same time, best simulates their homes to eliminate insecurities and endorse social interaction among other students and teachers. This setting starts in the Classroom.

To have a cohesive concept for this project, the design team chooses to integrate the model of a Bahay or a Filipino home. The very example of which is the indigenous and adaptable house on stilts bahay-kubo (hut).

The design team proposes mainly to elevate the building’s floor height from the ground to lower the risk of flood reaching the classrooms and to introduce an environment with a homey feeling showing the adaptability of space. Basing the Classroom from the standards set by the country’s Department of Education, Culture and Sports, and Commission on Higher Education, the Design Team used the seven meters by nine meters (7mx9m) area of an open plan with movable, modular furniture, such as chairs and tables, to maximize the use of the space. This area is sufficient to fit 40 students and a teacher in a classroom. This area can also be subdivided into two rooms by an accordion type of door connected to the columns that will extend the whole width of the room. Each room will then have an area of 7mx4.5m, which can be utilized in school affairs involving lesser number of people or by the kindergarten classes as they do not require too large a space. The building is recommended to be raised up to at least 0.75 meters above the natural grade line to prevent the constant flood from reaching the classrooms. As the building is suggested to be elevated on concrete footings designed to withstand the continual submerge in water, screens are provided for water to flow into and underneath the building but prevent trash to get collected below.

Maintaining and modifying original window treatment, wooden louvers are used as they are 100% efficient for airflow, absorb heat and are recommended for tropical and humid countries. They are also economical and readily available in the local market. At one side of the classrooms which faces the corridors and hallways, rotatable and sliding wall panels of wooden louvers are introduced for air to continuously flow. This will keep the classroom well-ventilated and it can also be rotated and slid to the side for room expansion or during open class sessions. The bottom of these panels is provided with a two-inch gap above the floor which is sloping towards the corridor to serve as drain especially when higher level of water accumulates in the area.

To provide sustainable sun-shading device, which is a design need during hot season, blinds made of reeds and an overhang of one meter (1m) is provided to give shade as well as high walls of bamboo screens, which can also serve as posts for crawling plants, such as vines, to grow.

To promote an open plan of a classroom free from obstructions and mess, storage spaces within the walls are introduced for shared books, teacher’s materials, class materials and supplies. These shelves are located sandwiched between drywalls and will double as classroom partitions covered by the sliding blackboards to one side of the wall. The other side can be mounted on with flattened and dried coconut husks as corkboards and decoration in the classroom. This provides good acoustical treatment between rooms.

Interior flooring is of concrete with epoxy paint finish. Floor height is set at 2.7m finished floor line to finished ceiling line with a plenum of 0.3m. Ceiling is made of reeds placed side by side, as well as the lights, suspended from the concrete slab of the above storey.

The materials mostly considered to be used are:
• Wooden louvers to absorb heat and provide 100% airflow within the room
• Runo or reed mats, blinds, screens and fix windows, as sun-shading devices, which are economical and available and can be made locally
• Flattened and dried coconut husks to serve as bulletins and décor in the room

This undertaking is designed to be cost-efficient, sustainable and economical without sacrificing the needs of the students for a venue conducive to learning, an extension of their homes, the classroom.

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