Classrooms for Hway Ka Loke School
Hway Ka Loke is a school for Burmese migrants and refugees on the outskirts of the Thai border town of Mae Sot. Since the military coup of 1 February 2021, the number of Burmese refugees and migrants crossing into Thailand has increased dramatically. Three local community-based organisations support the learning centres by providing essential funding for teacher salaries, lunches, and school uniforms. However, there is often no adequate support for new classroom buildings, sanitation facilities, or overall infrastructure.
Existing school facilities are frequently too small to accommodate all children. Temporary shelter-like structures have been erected to provide additional space for those who have recently arrived in Mae Sot. Even though most of the schools are registered with the Thai Ministry of Education, none of them receive financial support. This results in the construction of temporary buildings that are often very basic, mostly unsustainable, and almost never long-lasting.
Within a period of six weeks, and in close cooperation with the school community, we were able to build four new classrooms. The project was fully supported by the Stiftung Deutscher Architekten. Prior to the start of the project, the Stiftung Deutscher Architekten announced the opportunity to join the construction process as part of a travel scholarship for young architects and students.
All decisions on site were made in very close collaboration with the school director, the parents’ board, and the local community in general.
Selected according to climatic performance, availability, ecological footprint, and social factors, adobe bricks and locally sourced second-hand timber were used as the two main construction materials for the school.
The soil from the site itself contained sufficient clay content. By mixing it with locally available rice husk, we managed to produce around 4,500 adobe bricks within a period of four weeks.
By boiling locally available tapioca starch and adding it to a mix of fine sand and a small amount of local soil, we created a very strong and water-repellent final coating for the external earthen classroom walls.
With our initiatives, we aim to collaborate with rural migrant and refugee communities from Burma. The process of making adobe bricks is highly replicable, and the technique of producing earthen bricks and using them as a construction material is fairly simple. Every year, we invite local architecture faculties and high schools to participate in brick-making workshops and in the process of building earthen walls.
We aim to continue and expand these workshops year after year. During the workshops, students not only learn about natural building methods, but are also exposed to the complex political situation of Burmese migrants and refugees fleeing civil war across the border into Thailand.
The project took place from 14 January to 21 February 2025 in Mae Sot, Thailand, in collaboration with the Burma Migrant Teacher Association (BMTA), Stiftung Deutscher Architekten, and socialarchitecture e.V.
