School Park

The village of Maluran is located in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Nik Shahr County. The people of this village are in poverty, facing economic hardship. Naturally, in such circumstances, the lack of educational space is not the only challenge the villagers face. The absence of cultural, social, and religious spaces is another deficiency in this village .As with any other project in such deprived yet valuable areas, environmental, sociological, and historical studies are of paramount importance, which were conducted in this project. As we progressed along this path, we encountered fewer issues specific to this village but rather confronted other challenges.

Three main issues, alongside the project's problem of the lack of educational space and the design of a school, were identified.

The first issue, similar to how the village's football field was used for social and cultural events due to the absence of social spaces, we realized the lack of cultural and social space that caused a football field to serve a broader purpose than its intended capacity. Therefore, we thought that perhaps our school could also serve as an excuse to address other deficiencies such as the absence of parks, cultural spaces, social spaces, and more. Thus, the school program was modified, and additional capacities were added to it.

The second issue we encountered in this project was the lack of a monument building in Nik Shahr. So, we thought about how a school that could have more programmatic capacities could also incorporate these capacities into its form and be seen as an Icon of Nik Shahr.

The third issue was the adjacency of the school ground to the football field. Naturally, these two grounds are related to each other programmatically, and this connection could be strengthened by merging the two grounds into one. However, mere merging of the two grounds was not enough. If we were to integrate the football field with the knowledge that it would remain fixed in terms of function and form, how could we create this connection in the form as well? Therefore, we thought that the formal characteristics of the football field, including its color, materials, and geometry, could continue in the formal language of the school.

Subsequently, an examination of innovative teaching methods took place. Concepts such as teamwork, problem-solving skills, the art of living, the superiority of dialogue over monologue, and the shift from teacher oriented to student oriented education were prevalent in schools worldwide. In these studies, the idea of "Game" and education based on Game, through two methods, Gamification and Game-Based Learning, was introduced. The idea of game encompassed all modern educational concepts, so “Game”  was considered as one of the project's main ideas. The idea of Game, alongside the extension of the green surface of the football field onto the school, led us to the idea of a park. Through the synthesis of these two ideas, the concept of the School Park was extracted. To advance the School Park, two grounds were merged and divided into three planes through two cuts. Starting from the football field level, it culminated towards the school ground.The necessity of transforming the project into an urban icon The next two planes were arranged in various directions using the same method, inspirated from the general scheme of the traditional black tents in this region, three layers were juxtaposed to each other, resembling large black tents, but this time made of artificial grass.

Educational spaces were arranged in the form of scattered cubes, resembling the haphazard structure of village houses, under these large green tents. Spaces such as an amphitheater and a prayer room were allocated double the requested area to accommodate the village's religious and cultural activities during non-school hours. In the three large tents, several gaps reminiscent of the "kolak" of the past in this region, which served as wind catchers, were incorporated. Some of these are used for secondary access from the surface to the spaces below, and the rest are used for natural ventilation. Considering the region's hot and humid climate, shading these tents onto the cubic spaces and natural ventilation through the gaps could be facilitated. Ultimately, these three super tent structures serve as a park for the village's residents during the day and night.

Head Architect : Maziar Dolatabadi

Lead Architect : Deniz Ebrahimi Azar

Design Team : Sara Rajabi, Parsa Aghajafari, Farnaz Rafatjah

Interior Design & Rendering : Donya Yousefi

Drawing : Sara Rajabi, Parsa Aghajafari, Farnaz Rafatjah

Model : Aria Rahimi, Paniz Bigdeli