#2 Project 2020
Introduction
Project 2020 : 20 Architects, 20 Latrines, for 20 Families in Year 2020
Project 2020 is a social initiative by 20 Singapore architects and friends to design and build 20 latrines for 20 families of Village Bustatrav, Svay Chek Commune, Angkor Thom District, Cambodia. This project is in collaboration with the Cambodian Community Dream Organisation, Inc. (CCDO) under the WASH program. CCDO has identified these 20 families in Siem Reap province as beneficiaries for Project 2020. The project aims to raise awareness of the sanitation issue faced by villagers in the developing country.
More information can be read on the project's Give Asia webpage here.
The Site
The site is located northwest of Siem Reap, Cambodia, and in the Village of Bustatrav. The houses in the village are less than basic and many lacked sanitary facilities.
Team
20 architects, students from Cambodia and Singapore, as well as industry friends. Our director, Ar. Chu personally brought together these parties to design and build the 20 latrines personally by hand. The project was not just a design project, but also a logistics endeavour especially since it was the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
20 Designs
The team of 20 architects came up with 20 different designs which were applied to the 20 latrines, and later on replicated over another 100 latrines. The designs were constructed with brick for both economic and aesthetic reasons. The architects wanted to use a local material familiar to the villagers so that they can replicate the designs and build on their own later on. Moreover, the bricks have infinite layout possibilities, and only limited by one’s creativity. The latrines showcase the natural profile of the local bricks, with its terra cotta colour complementing the sites, which are typically an open space of bare earth and greenery.
20 Hours
The project team got down to work for 20 hours and built the latrine entirely from scratch. Students from the two local universities, together with the Singaporean and Cambodian architects, worked hand in hand despite meeting for the first time. They readily took on the architect’s drawings and did the hard labour and laid bricks according to the designs. The latrines were successfully built after a solid 20 hours, complete with a working sanitary flush system. It was a wonderful cross-border collaboration project between Cambodia and Singapore.
100 Latrines
After the project team built the 20 latrines with the 20 unique designs, the local villagers took on the designs and replicated them across another 100 latrines in the same region. Project 2020 has demonstrated that good design is not just for the privileged few, but should and can also be a service for the poorer strata of society. Project 2020 aims to not just give the gift of sanitation and hygiene for the villagers, but to leave a long-lasting impression and inspire the greater community through the day-to-day use of the toilet facility.
