The Dream School – a holistic learning approach
Next to the coastline in Northeast Brazil, close to a mangrove area in the state of Sergipe, lies a beautiful community named Pedra Furada (which means “carved rock”). There, time seemed to have stopped; little houses built with rammed earth by the hands of the local community frame still unpaved streets that are also composed of earth. The houses that do not display the same colour with the streets have painted colourful walls, evidencing both the connection with nature as a source of survival and the care for beauty in details. Children run on the local streets as if nothing could be more captivating than playing. Homeowners sit by the front door watching life on the streets or, just simply observe the beauty of the surrounding natural scenario.
A place filled with colours, natural beauty, amusing fauna and flora, amazing culinary and people and, a rich culture of folklore, local traditions and circular dances. This is the amusing context for a beautiful school project named Dream School, centred on its community desires.
The project was designed from collaboration between different stakeholders, including the following:
- A local NGO who has been acting on the development of the village for over 20 years through a social innovation lens and focusing on technology, education and creative economies – IPTI , led by Saulo Barretto (1);
- An architecture and facilitation team, acting through a collaborative and holistic design approach and having at the core Sofia Croso Mazzuco (2), Rodrigo Carvalho Lacerda, Guile Amadeu, Gustavo Fontes, Robernildo Araújo and Diego Regis (3), counting with the support of architecture students Annare Reis, Andresa Oliveira, and Matheus dos Santos;
- Together with Martina Croso Mazzuco (4), leading the landscape design for sustainable solutions.
- Moreover, the school is being sponsored by private institutions and will be built on an area donated by the local municipality.
The idealisation and design of the Dream School was developed through a collaborative approach mindful on community desires – having the architecture team applying a methodology different from that what is currently mostly practiced by architects in Brazil. By this collaborative approach the architect assumes that skills can be summoned between designers’ knowledge and the integrated knowledge brought forward by locals, thus optimizing the result and positive impact of the architectural project, aimed at accelerating holistic development.
The school was idealized through three different community workshops, led by the architecture team that also acts as the facilitation team (facilitators are responsible for facilitating the development of given communities, helping them identify local resources for development). The workshops were structured in a timeframe of 3 months, as follows:
– Workshops 1 (17 May 2018): School curriculum. This first workshop aimed at investigating the real learning needs of the local community, asking what type of knowledge and pedagogical structure would help them thrive socially, economically and ecologically. It was collectively decided that the school will follow a Waldorf pedagogy (with an anthroposophy approach based on Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy), combining social innovation and technical courses.
– Workshop 2 (18 May 2018): School architectural design.The second workshop focused on the synergies between the school curriculum and its architectural design, looking at ways to maximise community building, integrated learning (mind, body and soul), and sustainability. The community emphasised the need for a big area where they could cultivate their own food, besides a space for cultural activities such as theatre and dancing, and a technology lab where the agenda run by the local NGO could be taken forward.
– Workshop 3 (15 August 2018): Presentation of the school architectural project. This was an occasion to present to the community the school design developed thoroughly during 3 months by the architecture team, based on the conversations and material originating from workshops 1 and 2. Workshop 3 invited the community to either approve or make changes to the overall project, made visible through architectural drawings and physical models. The community was very happy with the result and did not ask to change a single thing; they felt very represented by the project.
During the whole conception process, it can be said that the community acted both as the client and as the architect. As set by the multidisciplinary team, the Dream School project values local resources and talents, and thus invites the local community not only to conceptualise the project itself, but also to join hands and bring its walls up. Part of the school will be constructed through a hands-on collaborative approach, called “mutirão” in Brazil, and much used as part of the popular culture in Sergipe – where people gather to build their own houses and, at the end of the day, celebrate together through a barbecue feast.
Hands-on community workshops will be guided sometimes by expert community members and sometimes by external experts who have technical knowledge on construction works, allowing the wider community to join efforts for building the new school. A community centre for assembling construction elements such as cement tiles and earth bricks will be settled to manufacture locally part of the school’s construction materials, and will keep being run by the community for commercialization to accelerate local economic development.
As part of the holistic sustainability agenda, the school will count with grey and black water treatment through septic tanks – that make use of specific plants to clean water originating from the kitchen and the bathrooms. It will also host food production, having allotments, orchards and unconventional food plants (UFP) that will be cultivated on a nursery to be set locally during the school construction. That being said, the learning possibilities of the Escola dos Sonhos, or the Dream School go beyond what can be learned in the classroom, and permeates its conception, construction and collective management processes.
The Dream School will become a real one very soon since its building process is about to start in November 2019. Interested in helping to build it? If so, please get in touch(5).
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