Rooted in Afuá’s local traditions and environment, the project reinterprets vernacular techniques to meet modern demands. It uses reclaimed wood, concrete piles, fiber cement boards, a wood-concrete hybrid slab, and thermoacoustic panels to ensure comfort and resilience. Its sustainability strategy focuses on reducing concrete use, enabling reversible construction, and sourcing materials locally. The design responds to the Amazon delta’s challenges
The school plays a vital role in the intellectual and social development of students, empowering them to become active citizens. However, school dropout remains a persistent issue in Brazilian education, driven by a complex interplay of political, economic, cultural, and social factors. This challenge cannot be understood in isolation, nor can it be generalized. According to UNICEF (2021), some of the main reasons for students dropping out include the need to perform household chores, work to supplement family income, early pregnancy, overcrowded schools, and limited access to educational institutions.
In this context, the present study explores the feasibility and potential benefits of establishing a boarding school as a strategy to combat dropout rates in remote areas. By minimizing the need for frequent travel to school and creating a welcoming, supportive environment for both students and teachers, the project aims to encourage sustained engagement with the institution. It seeks to integrate the feeling of “home” into the school setting by valuing local culture and promoting meaningful interactions among students, teachers, and the broader community. The city of Afuá, in the state of Pará, was selected as the project’s site due to its unique sociocultural, demographic, and geographic characteristics.
The project aims to encourage students and teachers to remain engaged with the school environment—not only by reducing the frequency of travel to the facility, but by creating a welcoming space that promotes well-being and fosters sociocultural interactions. Inspired by the local vernacular architecture, the design seeks to embody the sense of “home” familiar to its users, evoking feelings of comfort and belonging. The school will also strive to strengthen its ties with the local community by opening its spaces to the public, with the dual purpose of sharing academic knowledge and embracing local cultural wisdom.
The architectural concept was developed through a careful analysis of the morphology of Afuá and the surrounding riverside communities. Rather than imposing technologies foreign to the context, the project engages with the local construction practices, reinterpreting them to meet contemporary demands for comfort, durability, and sustainability.
The structures and enclosures are built using wood seized from illegal logging — a way to assign social value to a material already removed from the forest, while avoiding further deforestation. In humid areas, fiber cement boards were chosen for their light weight and high resistance to moisture.
The foundation consists of reinforced concrete piles, driven deep and braced together to elevate the building above the daily fluctuations of the river and to distribute the load across the soft, low-bearing-capacity soil. This maintains the traditional stilt-house profile but offers greater resistance to humid ground and the dynamic effects of the river on the structure. The free space beneath the building preserves the natural water flow, eliminates the need for landfilling, and contributes to a cooler microclimate — a strategy proven effective in local vernacular housing.
The hybrid slab is an adaptation of the steel-deck system: overlapping wooden slats serve as permanent formwork and are topped with a thin layer of light reinforced concrete, sufficient to provide thermal and acoustic insulation. This replaces the industrial steel decking with a material abundant in the region, reducing both the slab’s dead load and the volume of cement that must be transported by river.
For the roof, thermoacoustic panels were used, sourced from Macapá — the nearest logistics hub. Besides offering excellent thermal and acoustic performance, their light weight allows for longer spans and a more slender structure.
The dormitory façades celebrate Afuá’s unique identity: wood walls painted in a variety of colors strengthen the emotional connection with the space and help orient children and visitors within the stilted campus — a tribute to the local tradition of using color as a form of personal expression.
The project’s sustainability is based on three main pillars:
1. Concrete reduction – The mixed wood-concrete system reduces CO₂ emissions associated with cement transportation and values local carpentry labor.
2. Reversibility – All components are screwed or nailed, never glued, allowing for selective maintenance and possible relocation — crucial in areas prone to soil settlement.
3. Short supply chain – Except for the roofing and window frames, all main materials are sourced within a 100 km radius, strengthening the regional riverside economy.
By combining traditional techniques with contemporary engineering solutions, the boarding school responds to the extreme environmental conditions of the Amazon delta, supports the local economy, and embraces the vibrant color culture of Afuá — proving that innovation can flourish from existing vernacular heritage.
