Size

Build: 4,000 sq. m. / 43,056 sq. ft.

Year

2021

Status

In Progress

Client

Trung Nguyen Group

Partners

Trung Nguyen Group

Portrait of David Saladik
David Saladik
Senior Principal
David Saladik

David Saladik

Senior Principal

David Saladik is a Senior Principal overseeing MASS’s international health portfolio. Having joined MASS in 2008 during the design of the Butaro District Hospital, his work over the last decade has been aimed at leveraging the built environment to improve health outcomes as well as engage and empower communities. He has spearheaded MASS’s expansion into new geographies focused on long-term health systems strengthening, establishing new offices in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and Monrovia, Liberia.

David currently co-leads MASS’s largest office in Kigali, Rwanda with more than 80 architects, landscape architects, and engineers. Notable recent projects for which he has served as Principal-in-Charge include the Samajik Health Science Institute & Research Centre, a 520-bed teaching hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh; Norrsken Kigali House, an incubator for social entrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda; and the development of health facility standards with the Ministry of Health of Lagos State.

He has taught design studios at Northeastern University and Roger Williams rethinking primary care health centers to maximize positive social impact and resiliency. In parallel to this research, he led the design of the Family Health Center in McKinney, Texas - MASS’s first built US healthcare project.

Portrait of Nadia Perlepe
Nadia Perlepe
Senior Designer
Nadia Perlepe

Nadia Perlepe

Senior Designer — Kigali

Nadia joined MASS in 2016 and works in the Boston office. She is currently focusing on publications, working and coordinating a book about the architectural history of hospitals. The publication spans globally and charts the evolution of the hospital through essays, photo essays and case studies of African Hospitals, which are largely unexamined but imbued with rich implications for architecture and health outcomes.

Nadia received a Post Professional Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2016 and has previously completed a 5 year degree in Architectural Engineering from University of Patras, Greece

Prior to MASS she has worked at OYO Architects in Belgium and has been the 2015 recipient of the Community Service Fellowship from Harvard University to work in a non profit environment in the Greater Boston area.

Design Team

Dave Saladik, Nadia Perlepe, Annie Wang, Emma Colley, David White, Cynthia Deng

MASS is partnering with Trung Nguyen, the largest coffee company in Vietnam, in order to design and build a kindergarten in Buon Ma Thuot. The kindergarten will pilot a new curriculum that is based on a pedagogy of play, supported by a school design that seeks to encourage curiosity and exploration.

Classroom and playspace at the Trung Nguyen Kindergarten

Vietnam is the second-largest coffee producer in the world. However, climate change is predicted to reduce the area suitable for growing coffee by 50% in 2050, threatening both the country’s economy and the livelihood of rural communities, particularly in the Central Highlands.

Classroom at the Trung Nguyen Kindergarten

Trung Nguyen is responding to this threat on the Central Highlands with education. By focusing on early childhood education, Trung Nguyen hopes to instill a desire for lifelong learning at a young age, and ultimately reduce dropout rates among the nation’s youth.

Classroom at the Trung Nguyen Kindergarten

Conversations with local families, educators, and Trung Nguyen revealed the challenges of the current educational system and the opportunity for a new Early Childhood Care and Education system that is not based on test-taking and memorization, but rather on self-discovery and curiosity.

Courtyard at the Trung Nguyen Kindergarten
Classroom at the Trung Nguyen Kindergarten
Courtyard at the Trung Nguyen Kindergarten

In response, the school is designed around a learning playscape, with all classrooms situated on the ground floor and grouped in age clusters.

Courtyard at the Trung Nguyen Kindergarten

Each classroom is informed by principles of playful learning with an accompanying age-specific outdoor play space. This creates a continuous, uninterrupted playscape with all special programs, such as teacher’s rooms, a cafeteria, and art and music classrooms, on the upper level. The school will serve 450 children of local families, coffee farmers, and residents.

Aerial view of the Trung Nguyen Kindergarten

The school will serve 450 children of local families, coffee farmers, and residents.