With Montrouis celebrating its Grand Opening (the be-all, end-all of openings, see below), three Students Rebuild schools remain under construction, in various states of...Wall Phase.
At this point, Elie, Pele and HOK will start being somewhat hard to distinguish. Concrete block may not be glamorous in and of itself - a building's character tends to emerge towards its completion. (Montrouis is a perfect example of that.)
Montrouis may have been the first to finish in 2012 (and the students there pretty stoked to get back to school), but we're nothing but excited to see continued openings throughout the year...and watch the characters of these schools come into their own.
Bon Berger Montrouis
On Leap Day, February 29, the school threw an enormous celebration. Here are some shots from the party:
Do you 400 have hall passes?
Elie Dubois
Elie's cafeteria is slowly getting off the ground. To be fair, this crew is working on several buildings for Elie at once. The bloc sanitaire, or toilet block, has had its foundation steel approved for concrete pour, and the designers are finishing construction drawings on the historic building retrofit.
Cafeteria floor slab steel underway
Steelwork updated with column reinforcing tied in. You're looking through what will be a wrap-around porch and one end of the cafeteria
Steel's lookin' good, let's whip up some concrete! Cement courtesy of CINA
Pouring and smoothing the cafeteria floor slab
Home of Knowledge
The HOK crowd has been facing some continued frustrations. While progress has been made on perimeter and retaining walls (holding earth back on a slope), the local authorities have confiscated the site's cement mixer. This likely has to do with the contractor that was dismissed for unsatisfactory work. The Team has filed supplemental paperwork with Delmas to resume construction.
Retaining walls being placed on site
Bon Berger Pele
A few weeks ago, walls were begun for the first floor of the classroom block
Walls go up around column frames. This way, two sides of the yet-to-be-poured columns are already covered, making them easy to tie into the block walls with the upcoming concrete pour
Column formwork goes up - these babies are ready for a pour
Meanwhile, in the print world, two of the Students Rebuild schools are being featured in the publication Architectural Record as part of a Design for Social Change article.
The magazine got some great shots of Montrouis under construciton and Ecole La Dignite, where Madame Vivianne Vieux - who we met nearly two years ago - is now teaching her students in new classrooms. The magazine also features a project by Studio Drum who we worked with to develop those protective reed / bamboo window screens.
It's amazing how Students Rebuild-supported buildings are becoming example-setting architecture in Haiti - we could never have done any of this without you!
More Haiti school updates on the Students Rebuild Haiti blog.
