Mar Chiquita: The first 100% sustainable public school in Argentina

In 2012, a group of five Uruguayan friends became fascinated by the figure of Michael Reynolds after watching the documentary Garbage Warrior. Reynolds is a North American architect who rose to fame with the design of earthship houses, which are solar shelters made from recycled materials that remain at a habitable temperature regardless of external weather conditions. From this interest arose Tagma, an Uruguayan non-profit organization to build sustainable schools with this architectural approach.

These schools are public and self-sufficient, meaning that they use locally available resources and minimize the consumption of water, energy and fossil fuels. As the organization comments, the construction of this network seeks to “generate a triple impact: on the children who live in each school, on the surrounding community, and on society as a whole”. Following the school of architect Reynolds, this way of building and inhabiting the world in a sustainable way and in a logic of exchange with nature translates into a better quality of life.