Billion Bricks was founded in 2013 to solve the global housing crisis and is best known for weatherHYDE, a life-saving emergency shelter which received the P*DA Design of the Year in 2018. Why venture into designing a school?

Prasoon Kumar (PK): Housing is a complex and systemic issue which transcends not only homes but also poverty, education, access to jobs and societal positions. We have always wanted to work on projects that use the power of design to better the lives of homeless communities. In fact, our first conversations about Etania Green School started around 2013, before we started weatherHYDE, when we were a much younger organisation that was looking to find our roots.

Robert Verrijt (RV): When we started Etania Green School, what really struck us was how children were being systematically excluded from the education system on the mere basis of their legal status. Children either did not get any access to education or they were getting very basic forms of schooling like memorising the alphabet or rote-learning grammar. It became an interesting collaboration as the Founder of the school, Dr Kathryn Rivai, felt that the students’ lack of means should not restrict their learning to the basics. Instead of turning the children into little memory machines, we should help them become independent thinkers.

How does the architecture of Etania Green School support its curriculum and pedagogy?

PK: We believe that children learn from their environment, and buildings are one element of it. However, most school buildings often end up being functional structures that offer very little inspiration. As the school serves highly disadvantaged children but has little resources, it was important to look at how to incorporate the surrounding environment as a learning space. We see the school building as just one of the structures on the site that offers opportunities for students to learn.

RV: What we have designed is not necessarily a school with rooms to focus on single tasks, but an inspiring environment where it is fun to be in and enables learning from one another. The school is designed to be open with a lot of natural light and ventilation so that it can be used for most of the day. I see the school as a landscape in which there are several different spaces for learning. There are larger ones suitable for standard classroom learning, and small, introverted cells between them for more focused activities such as individual reading. Along the spaces are wide corridors, which are more like promenades that are protected from the rain and the sun. One side connects to a mound where students can climb up and down a slope, while the other blocks are connected to the ground via ladders and staircases. The school connects with the rest of the compound, making it a much more open place for exploratory learning and social interactions.

The school is made out of five decommissioned shipping containers and recycled timber. Why use such materials?

PK: Our primary goal has always been to provide good and safe homes within budget. When we started the project, we coincidentally got connected with the Founder and CEO of Triton, one of the largest shipping container companies in the world, who offered to donate some of their containers. Our search for materials also led our contractor to a stock of recycled timber that had been lying unused for years. It was a serendipitous opportunity to use recycled materials.

Initially, Robert and I had many discussions about the use of recycled materials as it is not necessarily easy and cheaper to use them. While containers are seen as cool and attractive propositions, they are in reality not large enough to offer habitable spaces. We ended up using the containers as a kind of extended foundation to prop up the school.

RV: Of paramount importance was to build a school which could deal with the sensitive ground conditions as it is located next to a river. Deforestation around the site had led to increased erosion and flooding risks. We were inspired by the traditional stilted longhouse common in Sabah but used the shipping containers which reduced the need for structural components. The containers also provided spaces for storage.

The school is the first in a plan to develop a network of Etania schools in the future. How was it designed to allow for scalability?

PK: Our vision was for the design to be easily replicable even without us. The different modules can be taken to different sites and configured based on the needs. For instance, Etania can have more classrooms by extending the corridor and adding more units.

RV: The school was designed as a kit-of-parts with a fixed set of elements. The classrooms were designed as units that could be configured to build a larger school. As the containers and timber parts were not bolted together, they could be easily assembled and disassembled. So, the construction was minimal. This system eliminated the need to invent a school design every single time as it can be built anywhere regardless of the conditions.

How does the design of the school support the needs of the stateless children of Sabah?

PK: As the children don’t have any legal status, they live deep inside plantations and have little exposure to the outside world. Before we built the school, lessons were held in donated spaces in strip malls and abandoned sheds within plantations. I remember seeing the students studying on staircases in malls. The school gives the children a sense of belonging. I’m sure that the school receiving the P*DA also gives them a sense of pride.

When I visited the school during its inauguration in 2018, some of the parents came up to me and said their children no longer wanted to come home because they enjoyed spending time in the school. It’s quite a contrast to my own children in Singapore who don’t want to spend any extra time in school. I think the children at Etania can freely play, study and enjoy being in school. They feel it’s their school, rather than just a place where they have to go and study. What was also interesting during my visit was seeing how confident these children were in speaking to a stranger like me. It is a contrast to many children I meet in Singapore, who have access to more learning aids and facilities but lack a similar level of confidence.

RV: The school has become a place not just for children, but also the parents. They come and set up shops for the children to buy food and other items. The parents have also started a vegetable garden nearby. It’s not just a school, it has become a gathering place for the families and community. This social fabric is important because they are marginalised and don’t have as much support from the government.