In the rural village of Darmang in Ghana, predominantly inhabited by farmers, many of the houses have no electricity, share a public toilet and have no water supply besides communal water wells. The village serves as the nucleus for numerous smaller communities situated approximately a half-hour's walk away, which consist mostly of mud huts built by the villagers themselves. In 2014, the village chiefs, representing the local community of Darmang, in collaboration with the local NGO VPWA, recognized the necessity for a new school to enhance educational standards in the area. 

Based largely on the fact that we were building in open terrain, the main decision was to try the clustered approach which departs from the common longitudinal school layout present almost everywhere in the region. The final complex should consist of 12-15 identical, 7x7m units, grouped to form inner courtyards, each belonging to a certain age group. A project like that would be more flexible and could be built in phases, even altered, if necessary, without changing the basic concept. By dividing a typically big school building into smaller parts, a different environment and a sense of scale is created, resembling more a small city than a school.

School construction time lapse