Open Architecture Network

"We Draw Building Plans" (sic) correction: "We Drew Building Plans"

Wheelbarrows are everywhere.

A poor old Kuwahara.  A favorite BMX bike of mine, 20 years ago. 

Youth With A Vision, the local organization, does a lot of outreach into local schools.  In short, they tell kids not to get pregnant, not to get HIV, not to steal; The big three.  The trips to schools provides for some cool opportunities for me.

Attached are a series of diagrams starting in on design of the first children's home.  There's a great urgency here to get homes built, and why not!  There are people coming to the site every day, hoping to find a place to put at-risk, to say the least, kids.  

Programmatic Considerations:

1. All of the houses need to be nearly the exact same to avoid heirarchy within the community.

2. Entry and exit points must be closely monitored by the house parents (no back doors for kids to sneak out of!

Construction Considerations: 

1. Duplication of design and layout will be good for construction management, but variety based on specific site conditions is desirable.

2. Efficiency of building materials and easy of construction is utterly essential.  

Environmental Considerations:

1.Heat here comes from the north and west.  In the summer, the sun is 80deg above the horizion.  In the winter, it's 30deg up.  Roof insulation is pretty unheard of in Dennilton, but that will have to change.    

2. Passive shading seems to be the most economical way to keep the house cool.  We have a nice grant to plant a lot of trees, and the west-southwest side of each house will get trees.     

3. All grey water will be run through reed bed planters and filtered into gardens or longer term storage.

4. All rainwater will be captured and stored for washing and irrigation.

5. Solar hot water tank located on roof.

6. Enviroloo composting toilet. 

There are further considerations in the diagrams, hopefully they're readable. 

As we're finally getting to the stage of actual design work (woohoo!) I've been taking shots of local precedent.  All of these images are from town.  Our specific area of Dennilton is call 5 Morgan, and each plot is about 5 hectares (very roughly 10 acres).  There's greater density on the other side of town, where houses are on modified version of a traditional grid, with small 15m x 15m plots.    

I like the brick detail where they're planning on future expansion.

Collage.

Unfortunately, corrugated metal as siding carries far too many cultural implications to consider it as a material for anything other than a roof.  Nicely detailed corrugated siding is quite rare to see. 

There have been neighbors living in my roof since January or so.  A family of owls has set up camp in the protected gap between the overhang of the front porch and the main roof.  When I mentioned it to Jabu, his first reaction was 'let's get them out of there'.  I told him I liked them and he said 'ok, then we will capture them, put them in a cage and make them fat on mice and rats.'  When that didn't take he just resigned himself to asking about them regularly.  Apparently owls and Zulu culture don't get along very well.  'The owl is a creature of the night' Jabu told me. 

With a bit further research I discovered that an owl calling from your roof means there's going to be a death in the house, unless you burn your house down.  A friend in Durban knows a woman who has burned her house down twice for fear of the creatures.  (Whether I believe the story or not is another matter... .who knows?).   I haven't heard the screetching call from my roof.  Usually I just hear it when I step outside to brush my teeth at night.  One too many steps from the front porch and a loud, spooky screetch gets me shuffling back inside, laughing and cursing a bit. 

 It's a married couple of owls, and they have just become parents of triplets.  The young ones are very well behaved, except when a parent returns in the evenings with food.  Then the squeeling and shuffling of feet on the corrugated metal becomes quite the event.  My guide book says it takes three months after hatching for an owl to fly.  By my calculations the should be airborn in late June.  That's gonna be awesome. 

Papa Owl on the electrical post nearby

Lots of little feet.  I'm not sure how well this will come out.  I can stand on a chair, reach up and take a blind photo into the gap in the roof.  Beyond the round pole (framing) there's a cluster of young owls, shuffling around.

The boss didn't show and we have a soccer field.  I found myself rather frustrated through the day as the field isn't as smooth or level as an architects standards require.  I went to town in the afternoon, and when I returned there were 43 kids out there playing soccer and netball.  Pretty awesome. 

The travels through southeastern SA produced some good times and

interesting building techniques.  Here in Limpopo, the northern

region, weather is harsher (I could see my breath this morning!).

For the most part, bricks and corrugated roofing make

up 99% of construction here.  The 'all corrugated scheme' that you see

in the shanty towns of urban cities are pretty few and far between

here, and we definately don't get the wattle and daube, or dry stacked

stone construction that you see here.

Of course, you don't get too much of the 'Luke Skywalker inspired'

housing either.  I think that's an original.

This little fellow sits outside my front door each night.  The chances are about 50/50 that I step on him on the way to brush my teeth.  He's also captivated by candlelight. 

Just a quick repair, patching a hole in the roof.  Of course, in this case, the hole in the roof was created by some crafty thieves with some tin snips. 

It reminds me of hearing a professor in grad school say that the easiest way to break into subdivision developer homes is with a utility knife (through the vinyl, through the sheathing, through the GWB.... bingo).  I don't think that's where the locals got the idea. 

We received a nice grant to support permaculture, rainwater capture and continuing agricultural development on site.  Step 1: give the gardeners a place to put their tools, garden hose, seeds, etc. etc.  There's also storage for our solar cooker and firewood. 

Ahh, order!

I'm travelling this week.  Currently I'm in Mtubatuba, in the northeast part of the country, reviewing solar lighting specs for an Architecture for Humanity soccer pitch to be installed at a school here.  Naturally, the first hook is making sure the panels can't be stolen.  The typical security atop a tower is wrapping said tower in barbed wire.  There's unfortunately a hook there too..... people love stealing barbed wire! 

Next week I'm heading down the coast to visit a community center/childern's village similar to ours in Dennilton.  They've successfully used the hand-press brick machine to build a number of homes.  I'm not sure our bricks are a smashing success, at least from a cost perspective. I'm hoping to 'get that sorted' as they say around here. 

More soon. 

(the day he returned to Dennilton, about 30 pounds lighter)

Lucas came home two weeks ago, after spending 2 months in the hospital and receiving a final health verdict of: “we weren’t able to really diagnose your problem.  You have a tumor.  Come back in a year… or sooner if you have any problems.” 

Disgusting.

On the other hand, his spirits were so strong to get the hell out of Ga-Rankuha that I can’t blame him for skipping the ‘purpose of why he is there’ part.  He’s outlived the odds already, let’s hope he keeps kicking ass.    

The good news is that he’s back to doing what he likes to do, what I think in the inner karmic sense of it, what he’s supposed to do.  We fired the foreman to whom he was the assistant, so he’s now the boss and loving it.  The quality of work done around here is considerably higher with Lucas looking over everyone’s shoulder, and while the pace isn’t any better, I can’t complain as much when the quality is satisfactory.  “100%” and “Number 1, not number 2, Number 1!” he says, and smiles a mostly toothless grin. 

We’re really happy he’s home.       

We went from the tools and building materials scattered about a number of different unorganized places on the site, such as kids bedrooms, meeting spaces, etc. etc. and brick making happening wherever the dirt was delivered that day and transformed it into to one nice healthy relatively clean, secure tool shed.  Ahhh, organization.  Everyone deserves a tool shed.

Brick production.

Paint and handtools, the extent of an African tool shed!