Scott Shall: Penguin Play and Learn Educational Centre

Penguin Play and Learn Educational Centre, Walmer Township, South Africa. 2023.
In 2023, I, through my non-profit the International Design Clinic (IDC), sent a team of 12 designers to help design and construct the Penguin Play and Learn Centre (PLPC) – an early childhood development center dedicated to providing educational support to low-income, primarily black South African children between the ages of 3 to 7. Located in Walmer Township – one of the poorest communities in all of South Africa – the PLPC’s programs were historically run outside, without shelter, whenever possible. When raining, the children are brought inside the teacher’s modest home, which adjoins the site. Although this arrangement is much better than what had been provided previously, it is not sustainable, especially given the growing popularity of the offered programs. To create a more adequate environment a new, dedicated facility was required.

To address this need, our small team of designers worked with local partners to design and build a more suitable structure using reclaimed materials, common tools and local practices. One such reclaimed element was the strip foundations and walls that ringed the site, both of which were built by a German team in 2015 in a since-abandoned effort to build a school. All others were found within the massive stockpile of scavenged materials and elements procured by a local architect, who would be a core partner with us in the project. To start the design process, our team performed an audit of this stockpile, carefully noting materials and elements that had unique, and useful, properties: durability, structural integrity, workability or sheer volume. As this assessment advanced, so did the design, starting with critical features such as primary structural elements and the majority of building envelop were developed, then proceeding to secondary features such as elements that could support passive heating and cooling and the program of the school, and concluding with the details that would enable everything to come together soundly. Through this process, new features emerged, including the central spine of the school. This element, which is made entirely of reclaimed elements, ended up serving a number of important functions for the design, providing a structural element to halve the span required, a secure means to admit natural daylight and air, and various important programmatic assets, including points of entry, secure storage, and play nooks for the children. It also enabled the team to incorporate a butterfly roof into the design – an approach which not only allowed for the gathering of rainwater (and important feature within a South African township), but provided an appropriately-scaled section for the space without creating a form that was too massive for its context or the limited means gathered for construction. By the end of the work, the team had built a 650-square foot school for less than $1400 in only 13 days with common tools, accessible means and, primarily, reclaimed materials (only screws, nuts, threaded rod, concrete and a few roof sheets were not reclaimed). Over the next few years, local partners will complete the interior finishes and site work for the school. Others will use the methods developed through the construction of the school to build other community assets.

CITATIONS include (insert links): Design for Rethinking Resources, edited by Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Carlo Ratti, and Martin Tamke, 203-218. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Publishers, 2024. ISBN: 978-3-031-36553-9 | 2023 UIA World Congress of Architects, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2023.
FUNDING SUPPORT (insert links): The International Design Clinic
PARTNERSHIPS (insert links): Penguin Play and Learn Centre, Indalo World and the International Design Clinic