Moving from its initial iteration as a standalone unit exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, the Norman Foster Foundation and Holcim showcased their progress on the Essential Homes Research Project, including sketches and physical models, presented at the prestigious and ongoing Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London, United Kingdom. The exhibition remains among the oldest open submission exhibitions in the world, which has been a longstanding annual affair since 1769. The Foundation collaborated with the Swiss company to design durable, cost-effective social housing units for displaced communities and low-income households in Latin America by developing an innovative and sustainable response to one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our times and a significant challenge to the way we perceive our built environment. After the prototype home presentation in Venice, the intervention’s advance into the next stage comprises upgrades on the sustainability aspect in Essential Homes, along with a community design composed of a series of collective row houses for displaced people. Following an extensive study and research of local housing conditions and challenges in the region, the Essential Homes project is all set to effectuate in Latin America in 2025 on the heels of this development.

The project’s inception in 2022 was facilitated at a symposium hosted by Johan Karlsson, founder of Better Shelter, a Swedish non-profit organisation committed to providing for the safety and dignity of displaced people. The company has substantial experience with local and international organisations and offered valuable insights gathered by personally reaching out to the refugee camps and families about their experiences and needs. The Shelter Workshop, organised by The Norman Foster Foundation and Holcim in June 2022 became the basis for the project, now nearing rollout. The workshop brought together a group of talented graduates to discuss and design emergency shelters for underprivileged communities. Upon discerning the likelihood of displaced families spending nearly two decades in these shelters, the scholars acknowledged the need for a durable and dignified home designed for semi-permanent habitation, which led to the design and development of Essential Homes.

Individual units built as part of the Essential Homes project are touted to be easy to install and dismantle and are fully recyclable owing to Holcim’s ECOCycle® circular design principle and comprise low-carbon materials including Holcim’s own ECOPact concrete, ECOPlanet cement and other local materials. A bed of aggregates will form the base of the home, supported by lightweight and collapsible frames. Similar formwork will form catenary arches as the skeleton for the unit. In contrast, 11 mm thick canvas rolls filled with low-carbon cement will form the skin, layered on top of 5 mm thick corrugated concrete canvas with internal insulation. The structure will then be sprayed with water, which is intended to harden the shell within 24 hours to strengthen the house structurally.

Millions of individuals and families are displaced from their homes every year due to numerous socio-political conflicts and natural disasters around the world, ending up either in refuge shelters, or worse, homeless. Designed for temporary habitation, these arrangements are often underfunded and overcrowded, with inadequate infrastructure and a lack of basic amenities, resulting in amplified proportions of the refugee crisis the world over. If this is not enough, these individuals and families are greatly exposed to violence and exploitation with no safety and social security. Interventions like Essential Homes unite several bodies for effective implementation and are a bright spot in that gamut. While humanitarian organisations are doing their part as they gather support and funding to address these concerns, architects providing efficacious building solutions to ensure a better standard of living for communities worldwide is possibly the strongest aspect of the social aspect of their being and professional practice.

With Essential Homes, one must acknowledge that a step to realising a hopeful, equitable world where displaced peoples have safe and dignified homes, a place that can help them eventually transition to permanent housing amid a warm and socially rich built environment, has been made. The community architecture project is to be seen as an essential act of care towards these families and ones at future risk of loss of habitat, encouraging their collective growth within a community with the help of public spaces and social infrastructure for their well-being. As these modular units combine, they can be customised and arranged to create common courtyards and public squares. These active nodes bear immense potential to encourage the habitants further to socialise, possibly nurturing a sense of belongingness, purpose and hope amidst the uncertainty for the future.

(Text by Bansari Paghdar, intern at STIR)