[from Architect magazine]

Imagine you have a $48,000 construction budget to build a school. The majority of your materials will have to originate from within a 6.2-mile radius of the building site. Also, the design will have to be simple enough to be constructed by a team of untrained volunteers. Oh, and there won’t be any electrical power at the jobsite.

That was the challenge that Anselmo Canfora, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Virginia (U.Va.) in Charlottesville, posed to his senior architecture students in 2008. The result was the Gita Primary School—the first educational institution within a 9-mile radius in Uganda’s Wakiso District. The school opened its doors to about 200 students last year, and has already received the AIA Education Honor Award and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Collaborative Practice Award.