Uganda School

Popa Tatu School is an educational complex designed for the community in Iganga, Uganda, a project initiated by the Adventist Church on Popa Tatu Street in Bucharest as a gesture of solidarity towards a region with a large young population and limited access to education. It bears the name of the street in Bucharest where the community that made it possible was based, a symbolic link between two very different worlds, connected by a shared decision. The complex is to be built on a site of over eleven thousand square metres, organised in pavilions around a central courtyard that will serve as the living heart of the entire complex, with green spaces, wooden benches and a small open-air theatre. The library is also described as a space for quiet and study, offering a much-needed retreat within the bustling complex.

The project's eight functional areas will cover not only academic education but also vocational training, agriculture, volunteer housing, and administrative support, conceived together as a self-sustaining system capable of responding to the real needs of the location. The proposed materials are those of the context, brick, wood, and bamboo, reinterpreted in a contemporary language that allows for rapid execution, natural ventilation, and spatial flexibility that mobile bamboo panels make possible depending on climate or activity. Sustainability is approached multidimensionally: socially, through openness to the community; economically, through the agricultural area that can ensure food and the vocational school; and materially, through the use of renewable resources such as bamboo and wood.

The canteen will also be open to outsiders, and the agricultural area will be able to provide food and become part of the learning process as an active, not decorative, space. The long-term vision includes a medical clinic and a vocational school for older students, designed to grow organically from the same core as the community and resources allow.