The prestigious Heat Adaptive Architecture Design (HAAD) Competition, organised by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, challenges students to design affordable, scalable solutions to combat extreme heat.
Second-year PhD researcher and Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program alumnus Kumary Saitabau, one of this year's winners, discusses his design for a heat-resilient school in Kajiado County, Kenya – and explains why traditional knowledge is central to his approach.
What is it about schools that makes them a critical point of intervention when designing for extreme heat?
I come from Kenya, one of the countries most affected by our changing climate. Heating is increasingly posing a huge challenge and health risk. Broadly speaking there are two types of heat: acute and chronic heat. Acute heat is what you often experience here in the West with short-term intense heat events like heatwaves. Chronic heat, on the other hand, is prolonged exposure to high temperatures, which is what we experience across much of Africa. On the other hand, Africa’s population is growing rapidly. In the next 20–25 years, it is expected to reach around 2 billion people. The majority will be under 30, meaning we’ll have one of the largest school-age populations in the world.
Children, young learners, who are the future of the African continent, spend roughly up to eight hours a day in classrooms. Schools are heavily under-resourced, meaning the young learners are continually exposed to this kind of heat; in the long run, it will inevitably affect their health and wellbeing. Hence, we need to pay attention to how we design them.
What was the key idea that set your design in motion?
There’s a wealth of knowledge that already exists in communities that live in hot environments, but modernisation and the allure of new ways of doing things have eroded these traditions. This is where I started, interrogating these ideas and seeing how I can translate them to fit contemporary ways of building. For example, my window designs are very basic: just louvred sticks made from brushwood, something you’ll find in many forms of traditional African architecture. It’s very cheap and easy to maintain and replace and the local communities know how to work with it; it works perfectly in these environments.
I also borrowed ideas from our neighbours who live in the northern part of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. For example, the Malqafs, which are essentially wind-catching towers that look like chimneys, are meant to capture the wind and direct it down to the inhabited spaces, ensuring a fresh, cold supply of air. They also work in reverse; some are painted somewhat black at the apex to heat up quickly and expedite the expulsion of warm air, which we know rises; it creates a convective movement where there is a continuous exchange of cold and warm air, a perfect natural and mechanical-free cooling system.
The classroom blocks are organised around courtyards, another response to harsh climates predominantly used in desert climates. They create sheltered oases or sanctuaries with a conducive microclimate by blocking the harsh weather elements; these courtyards also are points of interaction, encouraging spontaneous interaction between students and faculty members, acting like a third space of sorts.
I designed narrow, elongated buildings to maximise cross-ventilation while reducing exposure to solar radiation, as they are orientated along the east-west axis. If you have a window at one end and one at the other, it’s easy to cool a class, as wind can blow right across the class. There are so many other techniques that I’ve borrowed from different parts of Africa, reinterpreted and fused with modern ways of building.
Are there any design elements or trends that you deliberately chose not to use?
Yes, one of the ways people are adapting to heat is to incorporate an air conditioning system and offset it with solar power. But these are costly and require continuous maintenance and a high level of expertise, which can be costly. Similarly, I tried to avoid glass as much as possible, instead using things like louvred sticks for windows anyone in the village can repair if need arises.
What lessons will you take forward into future designs?
That there is no one-size-fits-all approach to climate adaptation and that several climate adaptation solutions already exist within our communities inform of lived experience and traditions that we’re yet to fully value. As I move forward, my responsibility is to unearth some of this knowledge and translate it into something that’s applicable to modern construction systems and disseminate this knowledge to empower communities.
