Ger Innovation Hub

The Ger Innovation Hub provides much needed community infrastructure to residents living in the Ger districts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. 

The Hub will offer a crèche, after-school club, performance space and educational workshops for talks and vocational training. Inspired by the ger, we designed a layered structure: An inner room made of mud bricks is surrounded by an outer layer of polycarbonate, creating a buffer space that traps radiant heat in the winter. This reduces energy consumption and serves as a model for the district to reduce coal use.

The building is a place for all sections of the community and offers an alternative place to go, when, particularly in winter, residents are confined to their households. As we continue to monitor and evaluate the building’s performance, the project demonstrates how the process of making architecture can be a model to enable the construction of a community.