MELA SCHOOL 1

2013  Anaikot, Kavrepalanchok, Nepal

Bal Prativa is the first building of the Standardized Mela School Project. Before the construction began, the team had consulted an earth-building expert for a design review. Based on his advice, the technology of rammed earth was changed to wattle & daub for concerns of labour intensity. The labour aspect was reviewed after completion - and technology reverted to rammed earth for future projects.

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In 2018, the plaster was renewed and window and door infills replaced. The repair made the building more resilient to local strong winds and driven rain.

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Objectives: The school was founded by the community in 2000 and has since established well in the area, with 200 students enrolled in 2013. The school was teaching class 1-7 but was missing class 8, which is the final year of Lower Secondary level.

Built: one Mela school building (3 indoor and 1 open-air classroom)

Site and access: Anaikot lies some 26 km east of Kathmandu (40 km and approx. 4hr driving on the road), on the hills between Paknajol/Dhulikhel and Nagarkot.  The site is directly connected to a car accessible road.    

Construction period: October 2012 - April 2013

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Structure and materials:

- Strip foundations of stones laid in mud mortar

- Reinforced concrete floor-level seismic beam

- Concrete pad footings for the frontal columns

- Dry stone floors with cement/sand concrete finish                    

- Perimeter drainage trench    

- Steep slope to road braced up with earth-filled bags                    

- Stone socles             

- Bamboo structure: Acid Boric and Borax solution pressure treated local bamboo

- Bamboo connections: 7 & 9 mm rebar with plastic whipcord (later replaced by wire); 10 mm threaded rods

- Iron tube spacer embedded in pad footings over the rebars in columns    

- Wattle and daub walls with abutting bamboo strips applied to both sides of walls and rendered with 2 layers of mud mortar

- Corrugated iron roof, J-hook fixed

- Suspended ceiling - bamboo mats

- Timber framed doors, flat-steel-tied fixed, with plywood wings

- Bamboo-woven window infills in wooden frames        

- Blackboards of cement layer applied directly to the walls                

- Furniture: prefabricated wooden desks and benches

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Origin of materials:

Nearby towns: Cement, rebars, whipcord, CGI

Kathmandu: Tools, threaded rods, treating machine, boron compounds

Local villages: everything else

Expenditure:     31,120 USD total(22,330 USD direct cost, 8,790 USD overheads)

Funding: Embassy of the Czech Republic in New Delhi, Namaste Nepal income and collections, Nadace Vodafone Czech Republic, Private donors    

Photos by: Petr Kostner, Sona Huberova, David Rolc, Marketa Gunkova

Mela School project by Meem Architecture is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License