Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia

In these fast-paced and constantly evolving times, architecture has been adapting to new building technologies and complexities to serve today’s world needs. Teams of experts from all areas, architecture, engineering, construction, and a long list of professionals, come together to bring these solutions to our built environment. At ArchDaily we have been highlighting these actors in the architecture we curate and publish every day, but we often come across other types of projects, in which we spot different needs, and ways of building in certain places and communities, that equally require a highly qualified team, specific local techniques, and knowledge that are worth sharing. 

In this edition of the ArchDaily Professionals Video Interviews, we talked to Tim Gledstone, partner in Squire & Partners, Edward Dale-Harris founder of SAWA (Socially Active Workshop Architecture), and Matthew Duckett, Senior Structural Engineer in engineering and infrastructure firm Buro Happold. The three experts came together to design and build the community Agriculture Technology Center in Krong Samraong, Cambodia for the Green Shoots Foundation.

Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 2 of 9Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 3 of 9Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 4 of 9Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 5 of 9Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - More Images+ 4

The Agri-Tech Center provides children and adults in the local community, with education in agricultural technologies, efficient, low-cost farming methods, and technological practices, also facilitating opportunities for enterprise. It is a perfect example of how an interdisciplinary team of professionals, architects, and engineers, can work together with a local community of contractors, farmers, young residents, and volunteers, to deliver a valuable addition to the area.

Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 2 of 9
Courtesy of Squire & Partners + SAWA
Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 4 of 9
Courtesy of Squire & Partners + SAWA
Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 8 of 9
Courtesy of Squire & Partners + SAWA

Squire & Partners is an award-winning architecture and design practice based in London, with a wide range of projects in the United Kingdom and across the globe, of various scales and programs. Their portfolio includes projects that combine traditional ways of building, with emerging technologies and a special emphasis on the details.

For the Agri -Tech Center, they partnered with SAWA, a design collective of professionals with an environmentally and socially sensitive approach to their architecture, building with and for the communities. As co-architects, SAWA and its founder, Edward Dale-Harris, took the role of Humanitarian Consultants.

Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 3 of 9
Courtesy of Squire & Partners + SAWA

The project is also part of Buro Happold’s Share Our Skills program, an initiative in which engineers from the firm give their skills without charge to those communities that are most in need and cannot afford the fees. Buro Happold, led by Matthew Duckett, while collaborating throughout the design process, specifically provided sustainability engineering, facade engineering, and structural engineering.

Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 5 of 9
Courtesy of Squire & Partners + SAWA
Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia - Image 9 of 9
Courtesy of Squire & Partners + SAWA

Check out our curated Community of Professionals and find the right collaborator for your next project. Moreover, if your company has been credited in any of the projects we published, we invite you to verify and edit your ArchDaily profile.

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About this author
Cite: Paula Pintos. "Squire & Partners, SAWA and Buro Happold: Design, Engineering and Local Resources Come Together for the Agri-Tech Center in Cambodia" 25 May 2022. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/982305/squire-and-partners-sawa-and-buro-happold-design-engineering-and-local-resources-come-together-for-the-agri-tech-center-in-cambodia> ISSN 0719-8884

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