Amazima Ministries

JINJA, UGANDA

Founding principal Evan Verduin partnered with Engineering Ministries International (eMi) and a team of volunteers and traveled to Uganda to meet with the Amazima organization in order to masterplan and design a new Secondary school. The eMi organization seeks a complimentary diversity in the creation of their teams to help understand the people and cultures they serve and this particular team was comprised of volunteers from around the world, including structural and civil engineers, landscape architects surveyors. Regardless of any previous research, experience, or local knowledge, to enter a new community is always to enter an unknown environment and this required that the team identified itself accurately as outsiders and guests and take the posture of learners and observers.

In the initial design stages, it was the role of the architect to synthesize the diverse input into cohesive foundational concepts. In this particular instance, the ministry founder spoke of an inviting, humble architecture—one that integrates a familiar material palette from a rural Ugandan context and connects to the surrounding landscape to form a place of peace and tranquility. The civil engineers expressed pragmatic concerns about the site and placement of the school buildings relative to site patterns of storm-water drainage. The future Head of School envisions a rock of stability breaking the current of brokenness within the vulnerable populations the school serves. 

Avoiding the pursuit of independently developed, isolated solutions was essential for the success of the project, the object was to maintain a creative environment where multiple ideas can be quickly and collaboratively explored, and then communally accepted or discarded. The result was a school campus that integrates new classroom buildings, administration spaces, dormitories and a chapel into landscape features designed to offer a variety of dynamic and updated learning environments with myriad connections to the outdoors. Together, the buildings form several gathering areas, including an entry court, and emphasize different vistas across the campus hillside. Porch ceilings and overhangs are crafted of common building materials and are natural frames of the surrounding environment. The buildings remain true to their local culture and context while providing inspiring spaces of learning and growth for each student.