Children's Housing
Baghere, Africa | 2022
Kaira Looro Architecture Competition 2022 | Architecture Competition
Team:
Adeline Pamela - Aurelia Dorothy - Britney Evelyn - Gracia Muljono
Function:
Housing and Health Facility
Location:
Baghere, Africa
Our concept derives from the meaning of Eden, which is a place of paradise with an abundance of greenery. Studies found that green spaces significantly benefit children’s physical, mental, and social growth. Eden House for Children strives to improve the well-being of malnourished children in a refreshingly green environment that does not only provide health care but also basic child care and education for mothers.
The project consists of a multifunctional building, housing area, storage, and child-friendly facilities with open areas for a playground, parks, and gardens. The multifunctional building is the biggest area on site for holding small functions, administration work, and cafeteria. The housing area is made of a few smaller buildings, four bedroom huts and a main house. The huts are separated for privacy which accommodate the children and mothers on their stay. There is a main house for the caretakers to rest that includes a public bath for the users to clean themselves. On the back of the site, there is a small building for storage divided into two areas to store medical supplies and gardening supplies.
The playground is located as the central courtyard since the project’s main users are children, it gives easy access and monitoring for the caretakers. Outdoor playgrounds help the children develop motoric skills, and train their physical health in recovery. Another outdoor facility available is the gardens that not only provides greenery but also a place to educate children and mothers on nutrition and gardening, while also providing produce to eat. The types of produce available are fruit trees, tubers, grains, and other edible plants.
Eden also has a goal to decrease energy consumption and create a green building by applying sustainable concepts. The main source of electricity is provided by solar panels installed on top of roofs that generate energy for lighting, water heaters, and other purposes. The walls for non-housing areas are designed with gaps that provide ventilation for natural thermal comfort indoors. The housing area is built with earthbags, which is a building material formed with used pillowcases or sturdy sacks sewn together and filled with local soil. The construction of earthbags uses very little energy compared to other durable construction methods and can include locals due to their simple construction. With good maintenance, buildings made of Earthbags can last for ages since this material can withstand earthquakes.
House of Eden uses a variety of materials for each building, which is divided into two types of building: brick facades and earthbags. There are some building materials used for building constructions and envelopes, such as concrete, irons for reinforced concrete, rosewoods, local trunks, earthbags, clay bricks, bitumen, and clear glass. Concrete is a composite material made of a mixture of cement, sand, gravel, and water. Concrete with iron is used to make reinforced concrete, which is stronger and can bear more loads. The use of reinforced concrete is necessary for structures such as foundations, sloof, and slabs. Analogous to reinforced concrete, rosewood and local trunks are materials that are also used for beams, columns, trusses, rafters, and battens.
Besides the structure materials, it is crucial to select materials for building envelopes. The walls are made by using two main materials, clay bricks and earthbags. The multifunctional building, warehouse, and main housing building’s walls are made of arranged clay brick, connected with cement while the roof coverings use bitumen sheets material. For circular housing, the walls are made of sturdy sacks filled with organic material such as local soil that is usually available on-site that are also known as earthbags.
Housing masses are built from earthbags. First, landfills are dug and the strip foundations are built. On top of the foundation, a concrete sloof is cast to support concrete floors. Earthbags are set in circles getting smaller to the top. Setting up the earthbags starts by digging a trench to undisturbed mineral subsoil, which is partially filled with stones and/or gravel to create a rubble trench foundation. The earthbags are built on conventional concrete floor slabs.
For the multifunctional building, main house, and warehouse which has brick walls, the process begins with digging landfills and making the cast-in-situ footplate foundation. The sloof is created using concrete beams on top of the foundations. After the sloof is made, the floors are created using exposed concrete and cement. Continued by building columns, beams, trusses, rafters, battens, and roof covers using local rosewoods. Several wood connections are used to piece wood beams together for structure usage. Walls are set by clay bricks and connected using cement. After the installation of rafters and battens, 9 millimeters thick of multiplex are put on top of them, before putting the bitumen sheets for roof covering.
After all the primary steps, the process has reached the final step. This process has to do with the installation of mechanical, plumbing, and electricity. This step includes the installation of lamps, electricity cables, plumbing pipes, etc. After everything is done, the walls are painted to finish the whole process.
