JSAA students build an eco-friendly school in Aligarh
The HinduSchools are temples of learning but the cost of building them is often exorbitant, which makes quality education inaccessible. For the Solar Decathlon India, a design challenge to develop resilient net-zero buildings, the Builders team from the Jindal School of Art and Architecture collaborated with the Society for Human Welfare and Education to build a new campus for Hamara School in Aligarh, which has been educating underprivileged children for free since 1997. Instead of red bricks that are produced in kilns and cause air pollution, we employed rammed earth construction, terracotta hollow blocks made on site, as well as bamboo and mud shelters. We learnt how to make terracotta blocks from the potter’s community in Khurja, and made blocks using the earth excavated from the site, with the help of the local community. Saving water Another major challenge was to reduce usage of water and create affordable systems for net zero dependency on municipal, ground or fossil water.
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