Gulmeshwori Basic School, Nepal, Nepalese Rammed Earth Building, Asian Architecture Images
Gulmeshwori Basic School in Nepal
28 Dec 2021
Architects: MESH Architectures
Location: Mahadevsthan Mandan, Bagmati Province, Nepal, central Asia

Kids of Kathmandu, an NGO that builds schools in Nepal, recruited MESH to build the new Gulmeshwori Basic School building for 5-7th graders on a scenic site in the hills outside Kathmandu. The organization is committed to sustainable construction. Resources were limited by budget ($135K), site accessibility, and material scarcity. They had a contractor experienced with rammed earth. MESH eagerly accepted the pro bono challenge.

Gulmeshwori Basic School
The existing school occupied a handful of small, uninspiring sheds. Nepalese pedagogy is recognizable as traditional, rote lesson delivery to orderly rows of students crowded into desks. To encourage alternative classroom organization and also in response to the open surroundings, MESH proposed an organization of hexagonal rooms: 3 classrooms at grade, with a computer room and library upstairs. A covered porch provides an outdoor space usable during the monsoon, and an outdoor plinth becomes a stage for gatherings, connected by stair to a green recreational roof.
MESH designed trapezoidal desks, scaled to the hexagonal classrooms, that combine into many different configurations to encourage diverse interactions: the desks can make hexagons to gather around, undulating lines to disperse for...