PHOTO shows architect Aya Maceda’s design of new classrooms for schools in Bohol that suffered extensive damage after the Oct. 15 7.2-magnitude quake that struck the province and parts of Cebu. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
TAGBILARAN CITY—The towns of Loon and Maribojoc in Bohol that lost school buildings in the 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Oct. 15 will be the first beneficiaries of classrooms designed by a US-based Filipino-Australian architect.
The architect, Aya Maceda, has been tapped by a nongovernment group, Oplan Bangon Bohol (OBB), to design classrooms for the earthquake-stricken areas.
OBB has identified the St. Vincent Institute in Maribojoc town and the Sacred Heart Academy in Loon town as the first beneficiaries of the classrooms that would use indigenous materials and were designed to be quake and storm resilient.
Maceda said she developed the design for the classrooms as a project study when she took up her master’s degree at the Columbia University in New York City.
Maceda said materials for the classrooms would be locally generated.
Each classroom would be 40 square meters, in accordance with Department of Education (DepEd) standards.
But Maceda said the concept of using open spaces would be applied in the classrooms.
“The design has a lot of multifunction spaces of a classroom,” she said. Maceda said that the back of a blackboard could be used as a book shelf or storage for learning materials.
“We want to create a low-cost and multifunctional classrooms,” said the architect.
World-renowned furniture designer Kenneth Cobonpue would help in the classrooms’ design, according to Maceda.
Cobonpue, Maceda said, will design walls that would provide ventilation and roofs that would provide ample protection from the rain.
Cobonpue’s expertise in wire mesh would be applied on the classrooms walls, also called rain proof screens.
Maceda said the wire mesh design of the wall would be
ideal for a well-ventilated classroom.
“Everything is open air. The veranda is elevated. The floor is raised because if it will touch the ground it will dampen,” Maceda said.
She said the classrooms could also be used by as venues for seminars.
Maceda said the design brings back that of old houses with big roofs.
St. Vincent Institute, the only Catholic high school in Maribojoc town, has a student population of 289.
Sacred Heart Academy in Loon town, which also mainly a secondary school, has a student population of 800.
The two high schools temporarily hold classes in makeshift tents.
Anna Maris Igpit, former beauty queen and one of the organizers of OBB, said that her group chose to rebuild the schools since these were the “least prioritized infrastructure” in reconstruction programs for Bohol.
Fr. Joel Ruyeras, director of Sacred Heart Academy, said that the group’s help was an “answered prayer.”
Ruyeras said he first learned about the plan to build classrooms in the school from lawyer Greg Delgado, another organizer of OBB.
Delgado said the prototype, once completed, would serve as a showcase to help generate funding to build more classrooms based on Maceda’s
design.
So far, OBB has raised P2.6 million to fund the classroom construction.
The group also worked closely with the DepEd on the classroom design.
On Sunday, two ground breaking ceremonies were held separately. Time capsules were buried at the proposed school sites, which were near the original sites near the Sta. Cruz Church in Maribojoc and the Our Lady of Light Church in Loon.