supported by the N. A. Barakat Family

Building Tomorrow, Inc. (BT) is proud to announce the commencement of construction on BT’s N.A. Barakat Academy of Nakaseeta. The future primary school, BT’s tenth in Uganda, will feature facilities for over 325 children in grades P1-P7 (U.S. equivalent of 1st through 7th grade), many of which have never attended class in a permanently built classroom.

Designs for BT’s N.A. Barakat Academy were solicited in Spring 2009 through Architecture for Humanity’s (AFH) Open Architecture Network Classroom Challenge. Over 80 designs were submitted for the BT-specific portion of the Challenge, with the winning entry crafted by a team of engineers from Gifford, a structural engineering firm based in the United Kingdom. Key components of the design include smaller, two-roomed buildings, a solar chimney to improve ventilation and provisions for multi-use configurations. An AFH Design Fellow will be in Uganda through September 2010 overseeing construction on site.

Nakaseeta is located 37km east of Kampala just off of the Kampala-Jinja Highway in Mukono District. Approximately 450 children in immediate proximity of the Academy are currently without access to a permanently built classroom. The Academy will be BT’s third to be built using a newly-adopted interlocking soil-stabilizing block (ISSB) produced on site, entirely from local materials.