During two intensive weeks, 20 students from HSLU and UDSM (Tanzania) worked together to plan and implement the water supply for a Montessori Primary School campus in Northern Tanzania. The goal of the interdisciplinary Summer School 2022 was to develop a water inlet and storage, a water tower and a filtering system for drinking water quality – a very dense, iterative process from first sketch to completion!

The remoteness of the site, the limited budget and tight time frame all required thinking about resources in the simplest and most sustainable way possible. The outcome is a system that stores irregularly available surface water underground from where it is pumped up to a water tower. The top tank in the tower supplies the school pipes with service water under sufficient pressure. Another portion of that water is processed through a filter level towards a bottom tank that supplies clean drinking water to the school and the surrounding community.

The tower itself, despite its height and the heavy water loads, is a light timber structure. Use of concrete and steel is limited to the plinth only, where they are structurally indispensable. The timber elements are locally available, cheap standard profiles. Both, the structure at large, as well as the joints are designed in a way that allows for easy replacing of weak pieces over time. Owed to the simple construction equipment on site the whole construction logic is based on human body strength.

As an interdisciplinary module, the Summer School brought together students from the disciplines of architecture, Structural engineering, interior design and building technology from both countries, Switzerland and Tanzania, in a joint project. Flight emissions were compensated locally with a longstanding reforestation project on Mount Kilimanjaro. The intervention relied on strong existing ties with the local community through the primary school, which was planned by Annika Seifert, Gunter Klix and Wolfgang Rossbauer, three professors from the HSLU Institute for Architecture.

Students: Angela Mosha, Ayko Orode, David Dubois, Deborah Baeriswyl, Diamond Boaz, Doreen Sanga, Edwin Lyakwipa, Fabian Figueredo dos Santos, Giulia Bosshard, Jael Strub, Jessica Forter, Martin Mkohi, Martina Burri, Matthias Egli, Micha Müller, Mike Schmid, Mike Sokol, Pascal Wacker, Qendrim Gashi, Sibylle Roth
Teaching team: Doreen Fred, Gunter Klix, Wolfgang Rossbauer, Annika Seifert, Uwe Teutsch, Reto von Euw
Collaboration: HSLU School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Dar es Salaam, Africa Amini Alama, APC Dar es Salaam, Wolfgang Rossbauer Architekten
Financial Support: HSLU Foundation, STO Stiftung

Experience report by two students

Students Ayko Orode and Mike Schmid (BSc Studies in Building technology) wrote a text on their experience which can be downloaded here (in german).

Video

Participating student Sibylle Roth created a video of the experience «Summer School 2022».

Poster