Medical Training Center of Mae Tao Clinic

Medical Training Center of Mae Tao Clinic Mae Tao Clinic is a humanitarian organization based in the Thai town of Mae Sot a few kilometers from the Thai-Burmese border. Besides free medical treatment, providing shelters and dry food for over 3000 children, Mae Tao clinic also started an education program in health care, sanitation and disease control for Burmese migrants to help developing a social fabric in the border region and inside Burma in the foreseeable future. Space at the Clinic had been completely taken up with the need to serve the ever-increasing volume of patients. Therefor Mae Tao Clinic had to find land to build a new facility to conduct their training programs. The first phase of the new Medical Training Center was completed in 2008 with the construction of new dormitories for trainees and a new conference hall. The constructions of the second phase, which included two classrooms and one office building, were conveniently placed in order to minimize the negative environmental impact and reduce the energy consumption of the buildings. The orientation of the buildings and the window locations allow the main wind direction to flow through the houses and cool down the inside of the buildings, without the additional use of air/con or fans. For the construction of the buildings, adobe bricks and second hand timber were chosen to ensure that most of the materials of the building would be able to be whether reused, recycled or would get back to the ground without costing any damage for the environment. Adobe bricks have been used in Thailand for many years. The values of using them to make the walls of the houses are not only based on environmental and economically reasons, mud is also an easy material to work with that allows everybody in the community to participate in the construction process. Due to its composition and the thickness, earthen walls are durable yet biodegradable. They provide sufficient thermal mass to the buildings to ensure excellent thermal performance and they have others beneficial attributes such as sound and fireproofing.