Dormitories | Mae Sot, Thailand

February 2020 //

Dormitories II Mae Sot, Thailand

The Bwe K’lar school is a learning center or migrant children from Myanmar very close to the border. It’s a boarding school for children from 8 to 16. The existing dormitories, shacks from corrugated iron sheets, were about to collapse. An impromptu design studio at Coburg University in winter semester 2019 brought a number of possible designs to replace the existing buildings. The idea came up to really build them in Thailand on site. The proposal of student Leonie Schwarz was chosen for realization – on a very small budget of 7.000 € granted by „Innovative Hochschule Bayern“. The amount of money turned out to be sufficient while using inexpensive local available and reused building material.

Results of the student work

In February 2020 a project team consisting of eleven architecture students, Prof. Rainer Hirth and Architect Jan Glasmeier started with the construction work on two new dormitories – with 55 m² of usable areas each.The load-bearing structure was constructed of local available timber – Teak and Eucalyptus. The corrugated iron sheets for the roof were token from the dismantled former building. The facade shelfs were acquired on the local market for reused materials. The school got comfortable buildings – appropriate for the poor Thailand society.