From Sabyasachi uniforms to marvel architecture, this Jaisalmer school looks like a distant dream!

Imagine school-going students wearing a famous fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee designed uniform to study in the marvel shaped architecture school. Seems like you are daydreaming?  Well not, this is almost probable in Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls' School situated in Rajasthan popular Jaisalmer Kanoi Village.

Situated in the middle of the Thar desert, where day temperatures peak close to 50 degrees Celsius and harsh winds cause sand to blow throughout the day, the location may seem inappropriate for building a school. But the US-based non-profit organisation CITTA and architect Diana Kellogg turned the idea into reality. 

Rare and Sustainable Architecture 

A school has the well-thought-out designing structure of yellow standalone, and surprisingly, has no air conditioners despite being built at high temperature. This tells the story of sustainability as students can study and even play in the protected courtyard without worrying about the extreme weather. The elliptical shape of the structure brings aspects of sustainability. “The canopy and the jalis filter the sand. They keep the sun and heat out. The pattern of airflow inside the building naturally cools it down,” Architect Diana says. 

She also explained, “The oval shape works, as it symbolises womanhood across many cultures. The symbol projects infinity and complements the landscape of dunes that merges with the school. It is also how the children play in circles or the women work in a community,". 

While the school provides education to girls from Kindergarten to class X, there is Gyaan Center in it, where renowned female artists, designers, education advocates equip young women and mothers to further their education and train them in traditional crafts techniques like ajrakh. Also, the school consists of a textile museum and performance hall and exhibition space for artisans to sell their artwork.

Sabyasachi Uniforms

Where actresses get a chance to wear Sabyasachi-designed outfits, here the little schoolgirls are living the Sabyasachi dream. The designer has designed the uniform for the girls through the ajrakh. Ajrakh is a powerful style in a unique form of block printing, famous in Rajasthan and Gujarat. He shared the picture of girls of Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School, in Sabyasachi uniforms.

The picture features the two-piece uniform of a blue knee-length kurta with ajrakh print at the bottom and three-quarter sleeves, and two patch pockets, along with maroon cropped elastic waist pants so that girls can be comfortable in. This uniform design gives a contemporary twist to the traditional salwar kurta uniform that most schools follow in India. Hence, these designed uniforms will sensitize students in promoting local heritage, give them a better understanding of our culture and sustain the craftsmanship.

Moreover, Sabyasachi was honoured to design the uniform. In another Instagram post, he expressed, “I have always believed in the transformative power of education. Especially dear to me are initiatives that focus their resources on educating girls…So when Michael Daube from Citta approached me to design school uniforms…I was thrilled.”

The ideology behind the school 

Architect Diana Kellogg seeing low literacy rates in Rajasthan state aims to build a marvel architecture-shaped school. She and Michael Daube, the founder of CITTA, took a decade to formulate and conceptualize the school’s design. Michael did not just want to build a building for a school. He aims to create an elegant structure that represents womanhood. “I wanted to build a monumental school, where parents would feel proud to send their daughters to study,” he says. 

He adds that school not only aims to educate underprivileged girls but also bring growth opportunities for women, and become a tourist attraction, all of which will create a “ripple in the desert”. Most importantly, this school project is backed by a non-profit organisation, and architect Diana who worked pro bono expressed, “As this project was being funded by a non-profit, I had to be very careful with the budgets. The hardest part was to make every dollar spent on it worth the cause,” to build first-ever an oval-shaped sustainable structure school.

With all of these, it can be summarised that Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls’ School is not just a school. But it is a mission that strongly focuses on achieving the principles of women empowerment and education. Though building an architectural marvel in the middle of the Thar Desert might sound difficult but architect Diana Kelloggs, NGO founder Michael Doube, and fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee set an example of how they blend a social cause with creativity and innovation.

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