The New Jerusalem Orphanage

New Jerusalem was founded by Advocate Anna Mojapelo, a businesswoman and community developer and her sister Phina Mojapelo, a social worker with vast experience in working with children, youth and HIV/AIDS.
Both Anna and Phina remain actively involved in the Home, Anna as Chief Executive Officer and Phina as Chief Operating Officer. Today Anna and Phina are assisted by a staff of 35, comprising social workers, care givers, administrative staff, cleaners, gardeners and drivers. An active management committee and Board oversee all operations.
VISION
To be one of the best children's Homes in the provision of holistic and integrated quality care to orphaned, abandoned, abused, traumatized, HIV positive and vulnerable children.
MISSION
To provide protection and fulfill the spiritual, intellectual, emotional and social needs of our children within the context of the family.

1. To offer Montessori Education and the latest innovative techniques in education.
2. To provide conventional, complementary and spiritual healing therapies.

CORE VALUES

• Selflessness, Service, Sacrifice and Surrender
• Honor, Integrity & Respect
• Confidentiality & Professionalism

Okay, thinking INSIDE the box to give these orphaned children a holistic, family centered childhood while up-cycling shipping containers, integrating solar technology and bringing it all to fruition with donated labor and materials just made the small, hard cynical stone that passes for my heart expand to almost normal size. I can't be sure, but I think it might actually be pumping again... I mean check out the good vibes that just hang in the air in this place. This is a home!

It's beautiful and I am quite certain I love everyone involved in this project (omg...I can't look at those children anymore or I'm going to have to get on a plane and go hug them myself.) Love, Shandra

Having last looked at a temporary use of shipping containers as building blocks, with O+A's festival backdrop in Amsterdam, we're back in permanent territory (as permanent as new buildings are, that is) with 4D and A Architects' shipping container housing at New Jerusalem Orphanage at Gauteng, South Africa. The project is among the more ambitious uses of shipping containers we've seen, . Gizmag spoke briefly to its designers to find out more about it.

In an email to +Gizmag, Mia Anfield of 4D and A wrote that the idea to use shipping containers came from the fact that two were already on site for storage. The company had already been interested in the work of Adam Kalkin, an American architect and prefabrication specialist who was among the first to put shipping containers to use as houses. The designers, it seems, simply put two and two together.
Completed in December, 2011, the entire construction period lasted six months, though Anfield points out that this was delayed by the arrival of materials to the site, many of which were donated. The project used 28 containers, each 12 m by 6 m (40 ft by 20 ft) in size, used both vertically and horizontally.
One consideration when building with shipping containers is thermal performance, particularly during cold weather or on hot, sunny days. We put this to Anfield, who said that design measures included "orientation of the building, timber screens constructed of eco-friendly composite decking, use of a roof garden for thermal mass and the inside walls and ceilings of the containers were clad in dry wall plus 50mm Isotherm foam insulation." The containers were raised on plinths to encourage the flow of air.
As part of the project, the old brick-built sleeping accommodation was converted into a new kitchen and dining room. The orphanage has also been fitting with solar thermal and photovoltaic systems.
Source: 4D and A, via Inhabitat