Fass School and the Teachers' Residence are a new primary school and residence in the village of Fass, on the remote west coast of Senegal, designed by Toshiko Mori's New York-based architecture studio.

The elementary school is the first in a region, consisting of 110 villages, which houses some 300 students between the ages of 5 and 10, is the first in the area that teaches children to read and write in their native language, Pulaar, as in French.

The project represents seven years of negotiations with local Muslim leaders and Nicholas Fox Weber, the executive director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and founder and president of Le Korsa, a nonprofit dedicated to creating medical centers and schools in Senegal.
The sensitive discussions resulted in an agreement that the Fass School would teach boys and girls literacy, practical skills like sewing and carpentry, physical education, and history, while continuing traditional Quranic instruction.

Designed by Toshiko Mori the circular structure uses the materials and shapes that Mori explored in her award-winning Thread project, also funded by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa, and located about an hour’s drive from Fass in Sinthian.

Mori designed an oval building with an inner courtyard for the school, borrowing its shape from an ancient compound in the region, and used the local workers with traditional skills and materials to build it (a necessity since it is located seven hours from Dakar, across the Gambia River).

She sourced the land for mud-brick walls that are supported by steel and bamboo. The walls were then painted white, an important step that deflects the sun's rays. The school's rooftop is a combination of bamboo and grass-thatched roof, another element that keeps temperatures down in the classroom, 15 degrees cooler inside (temperatures can regularly exceed 41 degrees Celsius in Fass).

"The design is based on a vernacular paradigm of the Senegalese’s ancient collective housing structures. The standard schools in that area are made up of rectangular concrete-block walls and corrugated metal roofs—very unfriendly and alienating structures which become very hot under the sun and incredibly noisy during rainfall."

"Architecturally speaking, I wanted to expand the potential of a familiar, vernacular building typology and to transform it into a new, contemporary icon of their own public institution with shared functions and spaces."

Toshiko Mori

Mori inserted six interior walls within the “donut” to create three classrooms and three indoor-outdoor spaces.

The roof shape is a parametric inversion of the traditional pitched one. It helps divert rainwater from flash floods into a channel that encircles the building and empties belowground toward an existing aquifer. A similar, smaller structure on the site provides housing for two teachers.

The artists’ residency and cultural center complements existing medical clinics, a kindergarten, and a farming school on the site. Its name was inspired by Anni Albers’s work as a textile designer and weaver.

Funding, meanwhile, was provided by Le Korsa supporters Laurel Hixon and Michael Keane, a couple who became aware of the cause and asked guests at their 2016 wedding to donate to it. Plans are now under way for more schools. Says Weber, “People are learning. This is just the beginning.” aflk.org

Project description by Toshiko Mori

Situated in remote Senegal, the new Fass School and Teachers’ Residence is the first school in a region of over 110 villages to provide secular education alongside traditional Quranic teaching. A project completed in collaboration with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa, the school can serve up to 300 students from ages 5 through 10.

Inspired by the ‘One Room School House’ in rural America where Josef Albers once taught, the school’s design can accommodate students of different age groups and at diverse stages of development. In the design, four classrooms and two flexible spaces are arranged around an interior courtyard. The oval shape allows for easy circulation between classrooms, allowing the school’s few teachers to move quickly between classes. The variation of the perimeter walls in terms of height and proximity to one another creates a wide variety of sections and experiences through the building.

The building’s shape was inspired by vernacular precedents, while its construction utilized local, traditional skills and materials. The local construction team was provided with instructional diagrams to assist with the sequencing of the structure’s precise geometry— this community involvement throughout every phase allows for easy maintenance over time. Small steel members and bamboo support mud-brick walls, which are painted white to deflect heat, and perforated to allow for ventilation and airflow throughout the building. An inversion of the traditional pitched roof, the thick thatch roof reinforces climactic comfort by providing an effective insulation against extreme heat. A stack effect allows hot air to rise into the peak of the roof while inviting cool air into the spaces. With a roof pitch consistently 45 degrees or greater, the unique form also maximizes rainwater runoff, diverting water into a channel that encircles the building and empties toward an existing aquifer.

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Architects
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Toshiko Mori Architect. Toshiko Mori. Jordan MacTavish.
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Collaborators
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Structural Engineers.- Schlaich Bergermann and Partners.
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Contractor
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Dr. Magueye Ba.
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Dates
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2019
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Photography
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Iwan Baan, Sofia Verzbolovskis.
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Toshiko Mori is the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and was chair of the Department of Architecture from 2002 to 2008. She has taught at the GSD since 1995. She was the coordinator of the third semester core studio and is a thesis director in the Department of Architecture. Mori is principal of Toshiko Mori Architect, which she established in 1981 in New York City. The firm has been noted for its intelligent approach to historical context, ecologically sensitive strategies, and innovative use of materials, producing a creative integration of design and technology.

Her work has been widely published internationally, and has been featured in numerous exhibitions. She edited a volume on material and fabrication research, Immaterial/Ultramaterial which was later translated into Italian. A monograph of her work, Toshiko Mori Architect, was published by Monacelli Press in 2008. She is currently an advisor to A+U Magazine and serves on the Presidents Council for the Cooper Union. She is Vice-Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Design for the World Economic Forum. Mori taught at the Cooper Union School of Architecture. She has been a visiting faculty member at Columbia University and Yale University, where she was the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor in 1992.

Awards:

· 2011: World Architecture Festival Award Finalist, Syracuse Center of Excellence.
· 2010: New York City Public Design Commission Award for Excellence in Design, Brooklyn’s Children Museum Rooftop Pavilion; World Architecture Festival Award Finalist, Greatbatch Pavilion; American Architecture Award Finalist, Greatbatch Pavilion; AIA New York State Award of Excellence, Greatbatch Pavilion; AIA New York Chapter Architecture Honor Award, Greatbatch Pavilion.
· 2009: AIA Buffalo/Western New York Honor Award, Greatbatch Pavilion; AIA New York State Award of Excellence, Newspaper Café.
· 2008: AIA New York State Award of Excellence, Addition to House on the Gulf of Mexico I; AIA New York Chapter Project Honor Award, Syracuse Center of Excellence.
· 2007: New York City Art Commission Design Award, Poe Park Visitor Center.
· 2006: Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
· 2004/2005: Best Architecture of Design Show, U.S. Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics.

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Published on: September 1, 2020
Cite: "A vernacular paradigm in Senegal, Fass School and Teachers' Residence by Toshiko Mori" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/a-vernacular-paradigm-senegal-fass-school-and-teachers-residence-toshiko-mori> ISSN 1139-6415
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