Lanka Learning Centre Sri Lanka building in Parangiyamadut, South Asian NGO education building photos
Lanka Learning Centre Sri Lanka
18 June 2022
The process involving villagers and University of Stuttgart students.
Design: feat.collective
Location: Parangiyamadut, Eastern Province, Sri Lanka
Aerial view of the Lanka Learning Centre showing its pentangular plan and integration into the landscape. The architects kept all the existing trees, which now provide shade to the complex:

Photos by Nipun Prabhakar
Lanka Learning Centre in Sri Lanka
Civil war and the 2004 tsunami wrought displacement and destruction in Sri Lanka. The client ? of mixed ethno-religious background ? survived both and became a child psychologist thanks to a German couple?s benevolence. The complex’s concrete skeleton makes the buildings earthquake resilient. The buildings are also placed on a plinth, protecting them from flooding and sand drifts:

Two NGOs that he founded to encourage education and inter-community reconciliation helped bring about the Lanka Learning Centre that hosts gatherings, craft education for adults and a large annual sports, games and music festival for children, to reduce inter-ethnic prejudice.
Perforated walls made of locally handcrafted clay bricks as well as the lifted cantilevered roofs permits effective passive cooling and allows the building to be used during the scorching summer months:

The pentangular plan?s circumferential wall meanders inwards and outwards, ...