3D-printed schools expand access to education

The project builds schools close to homes, eliminating the need for children to walk for hours in order to access them

Spotted: The non-profit Thinking Huts organisation is currently in the planning stages for its first 3D-printed school. The future educational hub will be located on the university campus of Madagascar’s Ecole de management et d’Innovation Technologique, and will serve both primary and secondary school students.

Printed in partnership with Studio Martazavi, the schools are built with concrete from an architectural scale printer. Shaped to fit together as development occurs, the goal is to create schools with individual spaces for a library, an art studio, a music room and physical education. Each structure contains vertical gardens on the outside walls and solar panels on the roof.

Local crafts and construction experts help to build the schools and are tasked with completing the project’s roofs, doors and ceilings, using the region’s most common materials. Additionally, area experts will learn how to run the 3D printer in order to take on the management of future expansion plans. The Madagascan school is opening for the 2021/22 winter term, and Thinking Huts plans to take the technology to communities around the world who are seeking more stable access to education.

With such unprecedented interruption to education, advocates for modernising everything from curricula to scheduling within the sector may have an extraordinary opportunity to affect change. Two new girls schools in India highlight the ways in which designers are placing sustainable living and human-centred design at the very heart of education.

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