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The Calauit School Project
Project Location
Calauit Island, Philippines
Brief
The Calauit School Project is a pro-bono, design research project aimed at helping build a better future for communities in Calauit Island in the Philippines. Still recovering from the devastating effects ofTyphoon Haiyan in 2013, the goal of the project was to understand a system of interrelated issues of climate migration, rural education, and traditional economic practices that have effected the Tagbanwa Tribe.
Timeline
8 Weeks
Collaborators
Henning Larsen Architects
Ramboll Group
PLOMP
Visual by PLOMP
Background
Design Goals
The Challenge
Calauit Island lacked safe, flood-resilient educational infrastructure in the aftermath of recurring typhoon seasons. With limited government support and aid efforts often disconnected from on-the-ground realities, the community needed a primary school that could withstand extreme weather, and support daily learning.
We reimagined the elementary school as a climate-resilient community asset. Drawing from vernacular Filipino architecture and local craftsmanship, the design integrated passive cooling, shading, and flood-adaptive strategies.
prioritized locally familiar materials and a low-tech construction logic that could be assembled by community labor.
A scalable blueprint for hyperlocal, climate-adaptive education infrastructure that strengthens long-term community capacity.
Beyond a single building, the work demonstrates an approach for shifting reconstruction from short-term NGO delivery toward hyperlocal, culturally grounded, and repairable systems that strengthen community agency over time.
Context
The Problem Space
001 Climate Disruption
Repeated typhoons and flooding make everyday life unstable and destroy fragile infrastructure.
002 Remote Island Access
Distance, limited transport, and supply constraints make construction logistics slow, expensive, and fragile. Materials, skilled labor, and disaster aid have proven difficult to deliver, and harder to sustain.
003 Education at Risk
Migration and limited opportunity reduce stability, weakening the social systems that sustain rural communities. Without safe, flood-proof schools, learning becomes intermittent, and long-term opportunity collapses.
004 Local Capacity & Self Reliance
Rebuilding efforts are often short-term, material-poor, and disconnected from community realities. The challenge is designing solutions communities can build, maintain, and adapt over time.
How might we design a school that functions as a daily learning space, and a typhoon-ready refuge when disaster strikes?
A Co-Design Process
Through a co-design process, we identified opportunities to rethink the typhoon shelter typology—not just as a place of refuge but as a multi-purpose, adaptable learning space.
Co-design here meant translating lived constraints into buildable decisions.
Research Insights
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Makeshift infrastructure persists because it performs better than ‘permanent’ aid buildings.
- Concrete structures trap heat and become unuseable during school hours.
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Spaces must operate differently in calm months vs. monsoon seasons without requiring a full rebuild.
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Remote access limits the feasibility of imported materials and specialized labor.
- Multi-purpose spaces are more viable, and is likely to be cared for, funded, and maintained.
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Traditional Filipino building knowledge already solves for ventilation, shade, and wet-season conditions.
“Having a proper school is important to retain our youth, it is about the survival of our tribe. ”
- Village Chieftan
“After finishing kindergarden my kids have to travel very far to another town because there is no primary school in our village. We will most likely need to leave so they can have a better life. ”
- Rosa (Resident)
“We got this concrete building built by an NGO after the typhoon destroyed everything... but it is too hot in here so we still mainly use our make-shift structures.”
- Teacher Arnold
What If?
The material palette came from the island, and not from global supply chains
Use local materials + familiar craft to reduce logistics dependence and increase cultural ownership.
Vernacular local practices is used as a proven climate technology
Low-carbon sourcing paired with local construction knowledge.
The building process was designed for community-led construction?
Construction doubles as skills transfer; aligning local labor, workshops, and modular assembly.
We designed with water, heat, and repair in mind
Passive cooling, deep shade, adaptable classrooms, and a roofline built for heavy rain define the shelter-ready learning environment.
A School as a Kit of Parts
We designed the school to be assembled like a kit-of-parts—adaptable, scalable, and easy to rebuild after storms.
This informed a construction strategy that prioritizes lightweight components, replaceable parts, and low-tech connections,
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
1) Lightweight Structure
A bamboo roof frame minimizes weight while using triangulated logic to maintain strength and stability under wind loads.
2) Layered Weathering System
Separate layers (structure, purlins, thatch/tiles) allow the envelope to shed water effectively
3) Standardized ConnectionsRepeatable joints simplify assembly, reduce on-site complexity, and make it easier to replace damaged members
4) Deep Shade + High Ventilation
Large overhangs and a breathable roof build-up reduce heat gain and keep interiors usable without mechanical cooling.
5) Elevated + Anchored
Pile foundations lift the building above flood risk while maintaining a stable anchoring strategy under storm conditions.
A School that Transforms with Community Life
The plan prioritizes flexibility: openable partitions, combined modules, and a central hall that supports both school and village life.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
1) Cluster + CoreLearning spaces wrap a central hall that becomes the social and operational heart of the school.
2) Expand / Combine / SeparateModules can operate independently or merge into larger classrooms through adjustable partitions.
3) Indoor–Outdoor ContinuityEdges, rain gardens, and shaded thresholds extend learning outdoors while improving ventilation.
4) Community-Ready The central hall supports daily assembly, events, and rapid conversion into a collective refuge.
What if a primary school campus could restore ecosystems, support livelihoods, and also function as disaster infrastructure?
From Classroom Modules to a Community System
Guided by Teacher Arnold and the Chieftain, we planned the school as a shared civic ground that supports learning, gathering, and self-reliance.
Water infrastructure is embedded across the site through rainwater collection and filtration ponds, turning heavy rainfall from a threat into a managed resource.
We extend the school beyond buildings into a living landscape, linking education with coconut farming, agriculture, and mangrove recovery.
The result is a campus that supports everyday learning while strengthening local capacity for recovery and continuity.
Life Between Lessons
001
We imagined the school as the village’s after-hours living room,
where play, craft, and gathering continue after class ends.
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Instead of hallways, we designed classrooms that open into shaded outdoor edges, so circulation becomes social space and learning naturally spills into the landscape.
003
Planting beds turn into hands-on-learning, where care, stewardship, and resilience are practiced in every day life.
Climate-Ready Futures
Visuals by PLOMP
Key Insights
Impact
While still in early concept development, the project established a clear design proposition.
We began with a simple question: what would it mean to build a school that the community could keep using year after year, storm after storm?
The result was not just a building, but a way of rebuilding that starts with what a community already knows - local materials, local craft, and the climate realities of everyday life.
Designed as a kit-of-parts, the school can be assembled, adapted, and repaired over time, staying useful on ordinary days while offering refuge when storms arrive.
Most importantly, it moves rebuilding away from outside delivery and toward something more durable: local repair, local agency, and continuity.
From Craft to Capacity
Ground in Local Knowledge
Secure NGO + municipal governments + national government partnerships, map local supply chains, and build a phased funding plan anchored in community governance.
Validate site + risk conditions on the ground, stress test key assemblies of critical building elements, and ease of assembly with local labor.
Building the Kit
Pilot build + skills training with first classroom module. Technical development + documentation with construction strategy and a clear kit-of-parts manual.
Procurement + local fabrication pathway for sourcing and pre-fabrication.
Community Stewardship
Expand from pilot to full campus build-out based on community readiness and verified performance.
Create a replication model for other flood-prone island communities.
Establish long-term maintenance + governance led by the community and build local economic pathways through ongoing fabrication, repair and stewardship