AKU ASA 20: Volunteers Build School Toilet from Reclaimed Wood

At a small primary school in Suphanburi Province, forty-one volunteers spent eleven days learning and building a facility that their annual camp had never tackled before: a toilet. For years, the AKU ASA Volunteer Camp has served as a gathering ground where architecture students and local craftsmen exchange skills that are gradually fading. Song Phi Nong Primary School required a sanitary facility on an open site shaded by a mature Nontri tree.

The volunteers arrived with almost no construction experience and only eleven days to complete the task. Moving away from the pavilions and multipurpose halls of previous years, AKU ASA 20 shifted its focus toward sanitary design and understanding how plumbing systems integrate with buildings and their surrounding environments.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

The layout responds directly to the context, utilizing the shade of the Nontri tree and natural airflow. This transforms the transitional space between the sinks and toilet stalls into an area where students can rest or cool off, rather than serving as a purely functional corridor. Furthermore, the design team led by SEP studio sourced reclaimed wood from the school's original 60-year-old Chinese-style classroom building, giving the new structure a tangible connection to the institution's past.