The project originates from a partnership between Made in Earth and Terre des Hommes Core Trust, an ONG which takes care of children in troubles (abandoned or orphans, disabled or abused), giving them a home, an education and possibly following till and through the employement age.
MiE and TdH share a strategy made of small interventions to be spread all over the region, so to create a network capable to multiply the positive effects of each one.
The Community Hall (now M.A.C.) of Tiruvannamalai is one of knots of this network. It’s a place where all the NGO community (children, parents, tutors) can gather together and also meet the other citizens of Tiruvannamalai. A place where the ONG open itself to the whole town and tell its story: the building had to contain a permanent exhibition of the NGO evolution through the years, and occasionally guests public events.
The building is in a region characterized by a hot wet climate, with frequent floods. But there were other and more critical conditions: mainly the limit of the budget, as well as of the local technical skills and capabilities; then the impossibility of having a standard process of the works and therefore to keep a real control on the project.
The design approach of Made in Earth is quite pragmatic and (possibly) not self-referential, that means trying not to impose any pre-constituted idea: this helps, for instance, in the selection of the materials, that are chosen keeping in mind their cost and real availability, rather than a personal image of exotic architecture.
Simplicity, both conceptual and constructive, was a fundamental point.