ECO VILLAGE PILOT

2020

Responsibilities: Design Research & Development, Architectural Research, Program Strategy, User Research

Collaborators: Patrick, William, Rolande (Nakivale) + Jamie, David, Mike (New Lab)

Context:

New Lab’s Beyond Place Studio supports innovations beyond shelter to create dignified housing and vibrant public spaces.

New Lab is a platform for scaling frontier socially-orientated technologies based in Brooklyn, New York. Opportunigee is a social entrepreneurship hub run by refugees in Nakivale Settlement, Uganda. At the start of 2020, New Lab formed a close collaboration with Opportunigee to facilitate the build of dignified homes, address livelihood needs, and provide vibrant public spaces for an Eco Village Pilot. The build phase for 500 homes for recently resettled refugees started November 2020.

Challenges:

A number of humanitarian aid agencies provide prefabricated shelters or temporary tents for refugees. They are affordable, easy to transport and quick to build. However, despite providing immediate relief, these types of shelters are designed for temporary use, lasting an average of two years. Considering the average time spent in a refugee camp is 10 years, these temporary shelters are not designed to be long-lasting functional homes. Shipped from abroad, the improved shelters also use foreign materials that are often inappropriate for climatic conditions, lack cultural sensitivity, and opportunities for personalisation for the inhabitants.

There is a need to provide more robust, dignified and healthy homes that are informed by local community members, site-specific materials, repurposed waste and renewable energy technologies. Of course, providing more permanent builds for refugees is highly complex and completely dependant on local government law and land rights. Fortunately for New Lab and Opportunigee, the Ugandan OPM gave the green light for the Eco Village Pilot in Rubundo, a new settlement zone about one hour away from Nakivale’s basecamp.

Opportunity:

Working closely with Opportunigee team members and residents of Nakivale, it became clear that there were opportunities to connect with local Ugandan enterprises and environmental experts to facilitate the build of the Eco Village Pilot, based on the innovation already happening on ground and improving the quality of water, energy and sanitation facility access. Examples include providing skills training for improved construction methods, vertical farming systems and increased durability of adobe bricks (to name just a few).

8 discovery points for the first research stage include:

To define what is meant by “community-led design” to inform the Eco-Village Pilot design and build.
To test and prototype a range of houses made from local sustainable materials (combining traditional vernacular methods and repurposed waste material).
To test and prototype how a standardised home build could be personalised and/or extended based on the inhabitant’s needs.
To collaborate with local Ugandan architecture practices to provide training for improved local material application e.g. construction of SSBs (stabilised soil blocks), lime-based adobe bricks and termite resistant eucalyptus wood frames.
To provide skills-training models for men and women in the community to build their own homes and/or adapt their homes to specific needs or preferences.

To test a range of private and shared solar energy home kits and cooking facilities to further connect homes in the village.
To test how digital mobile platforms can be used to facilitate skills sharing for DIY home builds and food storage facilities.
To identify what improved sanitation facilities are most culturally acceptable, easy to adopt and environmentally friendly to use.

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