Promoted by Vento di Terra Onlus (Italy) and Jahalin bedouins from the Bedouins Cooperative Committee of Anata (Jerusalem), the school project has been designed by ARCò (Italy), an association founded by a group of young engineers and architects, keen to promote "architecture as the resolution of tangible problems through an aesthetic interpretation of reality".

The building technique combines the idea of recycling materials with the desire of responding to some fundamental premises such as: the arid climate, the absolute prohibition of using concrete and foundation in the area (given the legal impossibility of building permanent strictures in area C territories), the need for a fast and easy building technique; minimum budget and not professional workers.

This technique, called Earthship and coming from the first earthship houses built in New Mexico, foresees the usage of used tires filled with earth as bricks for walls. Hence its advantages are both environmental and economical: recycling of a material that would have otherwise been thrown away as garbage, availability, extremely low or no cost, great thermal inertia of walls, easy construction and absence of substances release in the round and air, thanks to the clay external plastering.

For more information please visit the project website.