Sustainable Schools and Environmental Education Classrooms in Latin America: Building a Sustainable Education System

Contributors, Densities, Energy and sustainability, Formats, Low Density, Project, Tagma, Topics.

Architecture&nature, Argentina, Bioclimatic façade, Biotecture, Buenos Aires, Collective development, Community, Cooperation, Education, Educational Building, Greenery, Latin America, Low-energy building, Project, Rain Water Harvesting, Rural environment, School, Sustainable, Timber, Uruguay, Wood construction.

Since 2016, the NGO Tagma has been building sustainable public schools around Latin America in collaboration with companies, renowned architecture firms, local governments and lots of people from all over the world. It all started in Uruguay when a group of friends dreamt about creating a sustainable learning space within the public education system to benefit a rural community. They worked hard to raise the funds needed, arranged meetings with government officials and finally contacted the architect Michael Reynolds, the creator of Earthship Biotecture. Altogether, more than 200 people from 30 different countries (volunteers, students, community members) built a 315-square-meter public school in just 45 days. The school now serves some 70 students, and it has a water accumulation capacity of 30,000 liters as well as the possibility to generate up to 4.86 kilowatts of clean solar energy per hour. To date, it has been visited by more than 40,000 people from Uruguay and overseas.