The American School of Kinshasa

The American School of Kinshasa enjoys one of the largest and most beautiful garden campuses in Africa. We are a peaceful green island in the midst of a teeming city of 9 million. Over 25 species of birds, including African grey parrots and turquoise kingfishers live on campus. Tropical hardwoods and mango trees provide shade. TASOK alumni, students, and teachers created and maintain a campus botanical garden. Current learning spaces include two high school science labs plus simpler labs for elementary and middle school, three IT centers, two libraries, a well-equipped theater, a 25 meter pool, two soccer fields, locker rooms and showers, a covered outdoor gym space, and an extensive modern playground. In 2009 with the support of Flansburgh Architects in Boston, TASOK developed a comprehensive campus master plan to renovate our beautiful but ageing campus with the following goals in mind. Maintain and enhance TASOK's position as the premier English speaking K-12 school in the DRC. Strengthen TASOK's commitment to preserving the garden-like quality of its campus. Restore and revitalize outdated campus facilities to respond to the demands of a first world education in the 21st century. Identify incremental investments that accommodate short-term needs, support long-term goals and are flexible enough to meet an uncertain future. Since 2009, TASOK has met every goal. To date we have completed 4 forest classroom buildings to stringent US environmental standards, first world quality, energy saving, with water conservation and built for solar powered energy. These simple, elegant learning spaces are renovations of existing structures. In themselves the buildings are tools for learning in environmental science and green construction. The pictures speak for themselves.