Japanese architect cum professor builds primary schools in Laos for free

(KPL) Primary schools in Laos or in any equatorial or monsoon country should be cool, airy and bright for the young minds to study and play, said Professor Takahisa Kato, a practising architect and professor in architecture of Meisei University, Japan.

Speaking to a KPL News reporter on 2 September, he said that he stressed on using both natural ventilation and lighting to create a comfortable ambience for young pupils to study and play.

One of his techniques was to have two moderate-sized windows, one at a higher elevation and the other at a lower level to get the air to circulate in the classroom.

He also said that the positioning of the school on the east-west direction was most important as any kind of wrong positioning, such as the north-south axis would get the sun to shine on the school during the entire daylight hours, so that the young pupils would be roasted and toasted in their oven-hot classrooms.

Shade trees, he said, planted on both sides of the school would enable cool air to waft into the classrooms to give its cooling effect.

Professor Kato mentioned that he had devised a cheaper and simpler method of making interlocking blocks, used for anchoring the posts and pillars of the building.

Rather than use the trunks of trees, he would mix laterite soil with cement, roughly 15 percent of cement and harden the mixture by putting it in the sun. Once it was hardened it would be stronger than the wooden interlocking blocks.

This method was not only cheaper, he said but the other system required trees to be cut down and their trunks used to serve the same purpose and this caused deforestation, floods and global warming.

Responding to the question whether the schools he had designed and built would act as models in Laos, he said it would be up to the other primary school builders to decide whether to emulate his methods.

He had come to Laos on many occasions but he was always in the rural areas to oversee the construction of those primary schools that he had designed. In the rural setting he observed that though the Lao women worked hard but nevertheless they were charming, gracious, smiling and polite and all these attributes left a deep impression on him.

It implied that if the rural Lao women kept on smiling the professor would go on to make return trips to Laos to build primary schools.

Professor Kato had an impressive track record, as he had designed a slew of multi-storeyed skyscrapers in Japan, some of them so tall that their top storeys pierced the clouds.

As a person who was never short of money, he had generously given his expert services to Laos for free and the Lao Ministry of Education awarded him a Cross Friendship Medal on 1 September to honour his contributions.

Source: KPL Lao News Agency