Student Housing Standards

In the hopes of contributing to a more sustainable and prosperous nation, the Haitian Education Leadership Program (HELP), based in Port-au-Prince, recruits the brightest students from around the country that do not have the means to receive a quality education on their own. HELP offers scholarships to high school graduates for a college education, and provides their students with housing, access to their school textbooks, stipends for food and transportation, and supplemental enrichment curriculum. HELP is looking to expand the number of students they can enroll in their program in the hopes of contributing to a more sustainable and prosperous nation. The design team surveyed HELP’s existing dorms to analyze the challenges and opportunities for dignification and expansion. The lack of regulation and guidelines for student housing, and the absence of comparable building typologies in Haiti, meant the team worked with best practices and studied comparable projects outside of Haiti. To reach HELP’s goals of reducing overall costs and providing support to more students in Haiti. The team used design exercises to determine the ideal room types, their sizes, and the amenities that will better support a collaborative, thoughtful, and creative student environment. The resulting Space Standards can be used to test fit the student dormitories poised for renovation, as well as standards for new construction. The team used the standards to study how to increase the quality and capacity of the Croix des Prez dormitory. The proposed design includes a renovation to the existing dormitory, and the construction of a new dorm facility with a new sanitation block.