The Third Teacher: An Alternative School Where Looms and Lessons Share One Walled Campus

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This article covers topics related to Educational Building, Architecture. In Anegundi, a school and a hub for women weavers sit inside one curved wall, so that craft, farmland and classroom learn from each other.

In Anegundi, a school and a hub for women weavers sit inside one curved wall, so that craft, farmland and classroom learn from each other.

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UNI Editorial published Results under Educational Building, Architecture on Oct 30, 2026

Most schools treat the building as a container: rooms for lessons, corridors for moving between them, a yard for the bell. This one starts from the opposite premise. Its title borrows a familiar idea from early-childhood pedagogy, that after the parent and the teacher, the environment itself does the teaching. Every courtyard, ramp and sunken step on these boards is drawn as if it had a lesson to give.

The Third Teacher, by Riya Venki of Mysore school of architeture, proposes an alternative school and Weavers Hub in the Kingdom of Kishkinda, set in Anegundi, India. The project was entered at UnIATA '21. What sets it apart is the pairing in its brief: a campus for children that also gives the women weavers of the village a place of their own, without folding one programme into the other.

A curved wall that holds farmland at its centre

The site plan reads less like a school and more like a small settlement. A curved boundary wall wraps the whole campus, and inside it the blocks are scattered loosely rather than lined up along a spine. The most telling decision sits in the middle: a plot of agriculture land, not a building, occupies the heart of the plan. Classrooms, labs, the cafeteria and gallery, and the Weavers Hub all gather around cultivated ground, with a large running track, a smaller playing field and an amphitheatre pushed toward the edges.

Pedestrian and vehicular entries are separated along the road, and footpaths wander between the blocks instead of cutting straight across. The weavers sit near the road at one corner, the primary block tucks into the quieter back of the site. It is a plan that lets different users share a campus while keeping their own territories.

Site plan drawing showing school blocks, agriculture land, playing fields and an amphitheatre inside a curved boundary wall, with entry arrows on the road. Image: Riya Venki

Entering the admin block down into a courtyard

The administrative block is the first building a newcomer meets, and it greets them with a ramp rather than a door. The isometric shows the ramp leading into a courtyard set slightly below the surrounding rooms, framed by low partition walls and a short flight of steps. The offices open onto this void, and the courtyard becomes the waiting area. For a child arriving for the first time, the threshold is an outdoor room, not a reception desk.

Isometric drawing of a courtyard block with a ramp entry, low partition walls and pale trees around the roofless rooms. Image: Riya Venki

One module, repeated four times, for the Weavers Hub

The Weavers Hub, labelled on the boards as designed for the women weavers, is the most rigorous piece of the scheme. A single module combining workspace, display and toilets is repeated four times, and the four pieces lock together to form a T-shaped courtyard. The diagram sequence makes the logic legible in a few steps, and the resulting isometric shows a block that feels like a cluster of workshops around a shared open space, with coconut plantation noted at its edges.

The sections reveal the softer side of that rigour: shaded verandas, display edges facing the courtyard and a sunken central space where work can spill outdoors. By giving the weavers a complete, self-contained block rather than a room inside the school, the project treats their craft as a parallel curriculum, visible to children but never subordinate to them.

Presentation board of isometric views, sections and module diagrams for a weavers block built from repeated T-shaped courtyard modules. Image: Riya Venki

Ramps and split levels in the library and cafeteria

Where the weavers' block is horizontal and modular, the library and cafeteria block stacks and slides. Its massing diagrams split the programme across ground, mezzanine and first floors, with voids punched through to tie them together. The longitudinal sections show a ramp threading up through the building, passing reading areas, a children's library and a shop and museum on its way to the dining spaces under pitched roofs.

The board names its users as students, weavers and visitors, and the section supports that claim: this is the one block where all three groups are meant to cross paths. The exploded isometric, with its field of columns and offset floor plates, explains how such an open, layered interior can work without walls dictating movement.

Presentation board with longitudinal sections, an exploded isometric and massing diagrams for a library and cafeteria block, with children skipping rope below. Image: Riya Venki

Labs and staff rooms gathered around a stepped hollow

The faculty and common areas cluster staff rooms, discussion rooms, an art and music room and the chemistry and physics labs around an open court. The large cutaway isometric is the strongest drawing in the set: pink-walled volumes rise and fall around a pale paved space, curved steps descend into a small amphitheatre-like hollow, and an external stair climbs to an upper terrace. The sections note double-height staff rooms and an experiment room extending out from the physics lab.

The effect is that the space between the buildings does more work than the corridors inside them. A lab spills into a terrace; a staircase becomes a seat; a level change becomes a stage. That is the project's title made physical.

Presentation board of sections, form diagrams and a large cutaway isometric of faculty rooms and labs around a stepped courtyard. Image: Riya Venki

Waldorf colours and paired classrooms in the primary block

The primary block, designed for the children, is assembled from older-age and younger-age classrooms paired with washrooms and private play spaces, repeated to form a cluster. A Waldorf colour wheel sits on the board beside the form diagrams, and the axonometrics carry that palette into the rooms through warm tones, round openings and small nooks. The sections through the primary and high school blocks show pitched roofs over generous classrooms, with circular windows punctuating thick walls.

The cover board gathers these fragments into one composition, pairing the classroom clusters with the faculty courtyard and a column of small circular sections. Figures of weavers and children appear side by side at its centre, which is the most honest summary of what the project is trying to hold together.

Presentation board of axonometric floor plan drawings and building sections showing classroom blocks, form development diagrams and a color wheel, with children. Image: Riya Venki

Presentation board of cutaway isometric drawings showing pink-walled school blocks, a sunken courtyard with steps, and small circular section details. Image: Riya Venki

Why This Project Matters

Rural school design often settles for replicating urban classroom blocks on village land. The Third Teacher argues instead that a school can be shaped by the community around it: farmland at the centre of the plan, a self-contained hub for women weavers near the road, and courtyards, ramps and stepped hollows that turn circulation into teaching space. The clearest lesson is in the Weavers Hub, where a single repeated module produces a coherent courtyard building with very little fuss.

The scheme is at its most convincing when it lets outdoor space carry the programme, as in the admin entry and the faculty court. It invites a question worth asking of any educational brief: who else could this campus serve, and what would children learn simply by growing up alongside them?