Summer Elective 2024, Human Intelligence Program, University of Hong Kong
Teachers: Kent Mundle, Joshua Bolchover, and Jersey Poon
In July 2024, DDU Lab conducted a Field Workshop in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal as a joint exercise between the University of Hong Kong and Kathmandu University.
The key aim of the course was to deliver and evaluate impact to the local settlement through construction. This involves the transformation of an under-used school into a community library and learning centre. The course unpacks the potential impact this building will have on the community, including changes to learning, social inclusion, climate, and economic change. It also looked at how the construction process could contribute to delivering change through material resourcing, performance, local construction practices and community involvement.
This construction process in question was the testing of a prefabricated, lightweight wall panel system. While this panel system will be tested as an assembly for the active community library project, the aim is to use this project and workshop to seed the potential for such prefabricated assemblies more broadly in the Kathmandu Valley. Each student designed and built their own panel at 1:1 within a full-scale mock up of the library project, then evaluated their design for its potential impact in relationship to conventional modes of construction in Nepal.