The project in Vanuatu is moving along. Here are the final drawings. We modified my $300 Earthbag House design to meet the needs of locals in Vanuatu. The houses are clustered, two rooms have been added in each house, the porch enclosed and a common outdoor work area included.
Earthbag Building
Storm Safety Shelter
“This was designed for safety in mind. We have had many requests in natural disaster areas (Oklahoma, Colorado, California) that we decided to make a universal plan that meets the international standard for storm shelter safety with an environmentally sound method. The Storm Safety Shelter is designed in accordance with the 2009 IBC and the 2008 ICC/NSSA Standard for the Design and Construction of Storm Shelters (ICC-500.)”
Industrial Earthbag Projects
Our focus here is on low cost, owner-built homes. From time to time it’s interesting to explore related ideas to see what’s available or going on. As we’ve reported before, there’s a whole industry that specializes in industrial earthbag projects using geotextiles or geosynthetics. Their primary journal is called Geosynthetics Magazine.
EarthKaya Update
“EarthKaya is dedicated in providing low cost, low impact, earthbag building solutions in South Africa. Less time, less impact, less cost.
Ark Soaring in the Sky
Kikuma Watanabe is an associate professor at Kochi University of Technology in Japan and is responsible for the overall design of this project. The owner is Kagayaku Inochi (glorious life), a Japanese NPO. This school for orphans is in Sangkhlaburi village, Thailand, located near the borderline between Thailand and Myanmar. In this area there are a lot of poor people who immigrated from Myanmar. This school aims to provide sustainable poverty alleviation in the area.
To provide a good future for the children, they hoped that the school would be designed to realize their dreams. So, at first the teacher asked the children to draw the dream of the school building. One of them drew a flying ship as his dream. They adapted his idea, and tried to translate the drawing into architecture.
Kay e Sante nan Aiti
It’s great to see more house designs and projects to rebuild Haiti. This particular design is very good. I recommend going to their site (see link below) and checking out all the details.