New school and kindergarten built by volunteer charities in Haiti

The proposed project was for a new two-storey timber kindergarten situated in Fond Parisien on the outskirts of Port-au Prince, Haiti. The design was produced by Carden and Godfrey Architects and featured a timber frame with the ground floor fully exposed as a play area and the first floor clad as a classroom with a pitched roof.

Port-au Prince is an active seismic and hurricane region therefore the structure had to be designed for both earthquake and extreme wind loads.

ACA designed a bracing system to allow the ground floor to be largely open allowing for ventilation and a shelter for children playing outside with minimal obstruction while at the same time resisting an earthquake acceleration of the order of 1G and designing the structure to resist hurricane force winds.

ACA remained in close communication with the volunteers to support them during the construction processes. In several instances steel components couldn’t be sourced and ACA were able to reconfigure the details to utilise elements that were more readily available from the docks in Port-au-Prince. 

Volunteer charities completed two storey School building in Haiti in April 2016. It has since withstood the effects of Hurricane Matthew (October 2016), a magnitude 5.9 Earthquake (October 2018) and more recently the 7.2 magnitude Earthquake (Aug 2021).

Client
Hope House Haiti

Architect

Carden and Godfrey

Value

£Undisclosed

Photography

Hope House Haiti

Tags

Education