Education Centre Nyanza, Rwanda

The importance of clay brick as a material is clearly reflected in many different ways at the Education ­Centre built in Rwanda with 575 000 locally formed and fired bricks. Bricks have been used for the walls, supporting columns, ventilation openings, flooring and seating. A simple cross-ventilation concept, combined with the heat storage capacity of the solid brick walls, ensures a comfortable indoor climate. The regionality of the material, its universal application, its outstanding structural qualities, and the sustainable building culture derived from its durability, but also the craftsmanship it embodies make such projects realizable in the first place. Accordingly, the architecture that is so skilfully oriented to meeting the needs at the centre with its logical layout and careful details becomes a landmark statement for building with clay brick!

For this project, Dominikus Stark Architekten received a special award in the Fritz Höger Prize for Brick Architecture 2011.