The Sand Bag House by MMA Architects In Freedom Park, South Africa

As a proponent of affordable housing, i was glad to come across this project in South Africa from as far back as 2007. This is The Sandbag House, which was aimed at “Re-visualizing low income housing for a shanty town using simple mud-and-wattle building techniques which is highly energy efficient and can be built without skilled labour.“

The Sand Bag House was the first qualifying solution into the 10 x 10 Housing Initiative of the South African based design organisation, Design Indaba. They developed the housing project to build 10 pilot homes within a squatter area on the outskirts of Capetown in a bid to address the humanitarian crises within such areas and provide housing that would conserve money and resources.

Designed by MMA Architects, the Sandbag House achieves this goal. On a budget of $6,150, which comes to very little over N1,000,000, it uses locally sourced inexpensive materials, a local ‘future-resident’ community workforce and a construction method that replaces traditional brick-and-mortar with sandbags (developed by ecobeams) to create a strong, safe and cheap way of delivering affordable housing.

The Design prototype covers 40sqm to cater to a single family 5. Standing on two-storey timber frame, with the sandbag infills, the house is energy efficient, requiring no electricity or skilled labour to construct. Its a very scalable prototype that can serve larger families and grow to be even multifamily structures.

site plan

ground floor

first floor

approach perspectives

elevations

street view rendering

scale models

the ecobeams sandbag system

Upon completion, the blueprints and designs are expected to be compiled into a manual and donated to African Governments for royalty free use in developing similar projects as solutions to the great housing crisis we’re facing.

 

freedom park before construction starts

 

 

shanty towns in the area

 

a ‘family home’ within the shanty town

 

 

getting ready for sand bagging.

 

 

the community actively involved in sandbagging

 

 

kids and adults in the community lending a helping hand

 

 

‘laying the sandbag foundation

 

 

working on the ecobeams with the community kids

 

 

the materials used, timber, ecobeams, wiremesh and sand…lots of sand.

 

 

 

timber ecobeam frames going up

 

 

 

 

 

the sand bag infill

 

 

compacting the sand bag infill

 

 

community resident at work

 

filling the ‘walls’ with ‘sand’

 

sand bag packing against the cladding

 

midway throught the first level

 

 

 

first level sand bag filling done

 

Luyanda Mpahlwa of MMA architects

 

first floor framing

 

plastering the ground floor walls

 

first floor framing almost done

 

first floor framing

 

windows surrounding by sandbags

 

making good progress

 

looking good

 

one finished house…9 more to go

 

ready to move in

 

inside the ground floor

 

kitchen and backdoor

 

house 2 rising house 2 almost done

more housing rising

 

more homes complete

 

more homes, ready for residents

 

a finished house 1.

 

 

the virtually completed development

 

This is a truly inspiring piece of work that proves that solutions exist if only we can explore and create more. It may not be the most elaborate, or the most trendy, but it functions as intended and meets the needs of those that it was designed for, giving them a safe, pleasant and more dignified space that they can call home.

 

Heres a great description of the process of design as documented by Luyanda Mpahlwa of MMA.

Also many thanks to dezeen, inhabitat, creative review and open architecture network for the details and images.