ABSTRACT
Anna Heringer designed the Modern Education and Training Institute (METI) Handmade School in Rudrapur, northern Bangladesh together with colleague architect Eike Roswag, who did the technical planning. Heringer first visited Bangladesh in 1997 as a gap-year volunteer with a German non-governmental organization (NGO). The METI project, which won an Aga Khan Award in 2007, enabled locals to value earth as a building material once again. In a later project in Bangladesh, Heringer advocated two-storey houses so as to save land for food cultivation. Heringer's choice of materials and her collaborative building methods are focused on improving local building techniques and advancing their sustainability. Heringer and her collaborator, the artist and architect Martin Rauch, built the structure with a team of 150 students, Loeb Fellows and members of the public, in just seven 12-hour days. As getting a city permit to give MudWorks building status would have taken a long time, it was deemed an art installation.
