Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School: The Architectural Oasis in the Thar Desert

If you are visiting Rajasthan, the incredibly large and culturally rich Northwestern state of India, you would be tempted to visit the city of Jaisalmer, aka ‘The Golden City.’ Famous for the Thar Desert, the area is home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Jaisalmer Fort, the Patwa Haveli, and the Bara Bagh, among others.

You would also undeniably never miss the Thar Sand Dunes. Trekking across the golden-hued desert, riding atop a camel, is one of the most scenic, mesmerizing, and memorable things you can do on that trip.

If you ride on a camel for a far enough distance, all you’d expect to see is nothing but sand. But this is where you’d be exactly wrong. In the middle of the Thar Desert, right in the heart of Jaisalmer, lies an incredibly well-kept architectural beauty, whose design secret is nothing short of magical. Welcome to the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School.

Temperatures in Rajasthan, including Jaisalmer, often soar above 50* C on hot summer days. Going to a school as small girls, while bearing that unbearable heat, seems nothing short of a brute punishment. But this is exactly where the architecture and design planning come into play.

It all began with the Royal Family of Jaisalmer and Manvendra Singh Shekhawat, who donated the land for the school’s construction. Once the funds were secured and the project was good to go, an architecture firm from New York was contacted to bring this vision to life. Diana Kellogg and her New York-based studio landed in Jaisalmer to work on the project.

Diana quickly realized that she couldn’t use the usual method of designing the building. Even though she suggested using concrete or cement, it was the local people who stopped her and recommended using stone instead. A local Rajasthani man, Karim Khan, even spoke very highly of the ‘Yellow Stone’ that was used in construction, calling it their “Identity.”

Therefore, the entire building, including the facade and its interiors, was made out of this ‘Yellow Stone.’ And the secret to the cooling effect of this building lies in this stone itself. The sandstone has a very high thermal capacity, and hence, soaks up or absorbs the majority of the heat energy from the harsh sun rays.

Karim Khan also mentioned that the taller the building, the colder it gets. There are three aspects behind the design of this school: Its tall height, its elliptical shape, and the net or mesh-like pattern in its walls. All of these factors are individually and incredibly effective.

The tall height of the building is coupled with the fact that there are transom windows at that height inside classrooms. The wind actually carries the heat away from the classrooms, where the students spend the majority of their time, and into the courtyards via these high transom windows.

Soon after landing in Jaisalmer, Diana had a look at the city and decided that she wanted this building (the Ratnavati School) to be ‘very much’ a part of Jaisalmer. The entire city is adorned with houses that look like they are made of yellow brick or stone. From a top-down view, it looks like a vast yellow carpet in the desert.

Diana wanted the building to reflect the moving dunes, the wind, and all the elements you see in a desert building. Since the building is just an ellipse of yellow-stoned bricks embalmed together, it is completely open at the top. Diana Kellogg rightfully called it, “A desert building that’s all about the sky.”

Kellogg became very strongly attracted to the ethnic and cultural craftsmanship that had existed for centuries in Jaisalmer. She actively promoted that, and also wanted to showcase it in her work. Hence, you see several beautiful ornamental designs on the building wall.

Diana also cared deeply about the safety of young girls inside the institution. This is where the ‘Jaali’ walls come in. A strong cultural element that shows up in the form of architecture is the “Veiling of Women.” These are the Jaali walls, which Diana utilized in her design, albeit in a modern interpretation that provides modesty to the girls. This allows her and the design to be respectful to women in general.

The ‘Jaali’ walls also increase the speed of the wind and cool the temperature down. This happens due to something called the “Venturi Effect.” Named after the Italian physicist Giovanni Battista Venturi, the namesake effect is the reduction in fluid pressure that results when a moving fluid speeds up as it is funneled from one section of a pipe to another, smaller section.

As the fluid flows into the smaller area, its velocity increases, while the static pressure decreases. This is exactly what’s happening inside the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School; except it’s happening with ‘Air’ instead of ‘Water.’

All of these methods combined have reduced nearly 12-13* Celsius degree temperature inside the building premises.

There are also ‘Solar Panels’ placed all across the building that fulfil the electricity needs. A pump is present to have a water harvesting system. To get this done, Diana went to local sources in Jaisalmer who are experts in the water harvesting techniques and have been doing it for generations.

The roof of the building and its courtyard are both collectors of water during rainfall. The building collects enough water throughout the monsoon season, and that remains stored for the rest of the year.

Before settling on the eventual ‘Ellipse’, Diana Kellogg had been researching the shape itself and its history across cultures and the various symbolisms. Diana found that it is the shape of ‘Femininity’ in more ways than one. An egg, which is of an elliptical shape, is also associated with female fertility.

To make the symbolism more pronounced, the womb of a woman is also somewhat of an ellipse. Diana further went on to say that when the girls first went in, they started playing in circles. She also stressed that women often work in circles. For all these connections, Diana felt that there was a natural connection between womankind and the ‘Ellipse’ shape.

With this inspiration, Diana Kellogg and her team completed the project of building the Rajkumari Ratnavati Girls School, and sent a very strong message across – Your girls are just as powerful as boys. In a place like Jaisalmer, where female infanticide rates are high, where girl education is scarce to none, and where girls are either married off at a very young age (often as a child) or enter the manual labor force, American architect Diana Kellogg, and the visionaries behind this project, is telling the world that daughters are just as precious as sons, and they deserve quality education like anyone else.