Loreto South Sudan

Student Design Collaboration, 2026

Loreto South Sudan was a collaborative design process ran as part of MSA LIVE, an annual programme of student led live projects at Manchester School of Architecture (MSA). In collaboration with Loreto Sixth Form College in Hulme, we developed a brief for architecture students to work with prospective architecture students on a shared brief for another Loreto College based in South Sudan.

We made contact with Loreto Rumbek, a school and primary healthcare centre established by the Loreto Sisters in 2008. The school provides much needed education for girls aged 5–20, and its mission continues to grow with plans for a new school in Aweil, approximately 400km away, which we made the focus of our project. Inspiration was taken from schools like Bang Nong Saeng Kindergarten in Thailand by Sarquella + Torres Arquitectes and PORET Kindergarten in Zimbabwe by Studio Anna Heringer, both of which demonstrate how architecture can preserve and transmit Living Heritage, not only through the materials, construction techniques, and environmental knowledge embedded in their designs, but also through collective processes of making, learning, storytelling, and community participation that pass cultural knowledge between generations.

Rather than approaching the school as a conventional architectural brief, students were encouraged to consider the knowledge embedded within the local community, including customs, traditions, materials, construction techniques, climate and patterns of everyday life. Working collaboratively across the two institutions, students explored ideas through architectural drawings, collage, physical and digital models, through a sequence of workshops which culminating in us winning the MSA Best Collaboration Award 2026 at the end of the project.