Colorful pavilion, once on exhibit, becomes schoolhouse for 600 kids in Kenya

Architecture and art for social impact often makes its way to global art museums. Designers, in their effort to raise awareness about a problem—and their work—will often turn to cultural institutions as a way to reach the masses.

But rarely do installations, like this pavilion by Spanish studio SelgasCano, take the opposite trajectory, leaping from museum to urban environment. In images by architectural photographer Iwan Baan we spotted on Dezeen, the pavilion’s new use as a schoolhouse for 600 kids in Nairobi, Kenya’s Kibera neighborhood—a massive improvised community of corrugated-metal houses—is on full display.

Much like the structures around it, the SelgasCano pavilion, also consists of a corrugated building material—a polycarbonate—but also incorporates cardboard and a metal-tube framework.

The pavilion was part of an exhibition in the summer of 2015 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside Copenhagen, but made its way to Nairobi, dismantled and packed in a series of shipping containers, late last year. After a six-week delay brought on by what Dezeen calls a forced “official government payment,” 20 local builders helped put the structure back together.

For stellar photos by architectural lensmith Iwan Baan of the project in situ, head on over to Dezeen.

This isn’t the first time we’ve fawned over SelgasCano’s work: In 2015, the firm designed the Serpentine Galleries pavilion in London. The studio’s work was also on display at the first-ever Chicago Architecture Biennial in October of 2015.

Via: Dezeen