Nubian Vault Manual
1 The Nubian Vault Association: Burkina Faso Sustainable housing for as many people as possible, as soon as possible Project description The Nubian Vault Association (Associa.
According to retired State Department official James Stewart, who works with the organization, housing is a significant expense in low-income areas of Africa, and this technique, refined through hundreds of years, offers many advantages for today’s builders. Inexpensive and easy to assemble, these mud brick structures excel at cooling and encourage airflow.
The end result is something like a climate-appropriate. “People are inadequately housed in the region, and there isn’t always money to solve it among the poorest of the poor,” says Stewart. “This program helps address that need.” The AVN program puts housing in reach by cutting costs and keeping money within the community. The final cost of a Nubian vault home varies depending on the size of the project, but can be 50-60 percent cheaper than a similar structure made from concrete blocks, and requires less maintenance over time. In addition, the new homes are built from local mud brick, instead of costly concrete or metal, which has to be imported. Homeowners can even make their own bricks to cut costs even further.
And by training the local masons who build the homes, AVN is stimulating the local economy and creating new jobs. The project requires that every job site has an apprentice on site. Masons train other masons, spreading the technique and building a community of more than 635 trained masons. If that’s not enough, this new wave of buildings also benefits the environment. More sustainable than wood and thatched roofs homes (the construction of which has contributed to deforestation alongside climate change and urbanization), AVN buildings have saved 65,000 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere, according to the organization’s research.
What it's about: The Nubian Vault Association (AVN) is a 17 year-old French NGO dedicated to enabling better housing for people in the Sahel, and this year’s winner of the World Habitat Award. The premise of AVN’s mission is simple: in Sudano-Sahelian Africa (the strip going from Senegal to Djibouti), deforestation, poverty, demography and climate change make it difficult for people to house themselves in a decent way. Wood and straw, the traditional building and roofing materials, are now too scarce to be sustainable, and imported materials are expensive, pollutant and completely unadaptable to the climate and living needs. As a result, many people live in extremely precarious and unsanitary conditions. To answer this, AVN has revived, simplified and standardised an ancestral building technique, known as the Nubian Vault, originating in Ancient Egypt.
It requires neither wood nor metal, but simply raw earth bricks and mortar. It is wholly adapted to the Sahelian lifestyles, economies and climate: low-tech, low cost, possibility for clients to contribute to the construction in other means than cash (work, materials), thermal insulation, cultural appropriateness, etc. It’s also a key solution for climate change alleviation (low-carbon) and adaptation as only available resources are used, the buildings offer better comfort in the face of observed and impending increased temperatures and weather variability. To disseminate this solution to as many people as possible, AVN chooses not to build or donate houses (one-off charity approach) but to initiate and grow a local market for it, which enables people to adopt the technique, replicate it, and sustain their own economies with it. While a non-profit, AVN works on the principles of social entrepreneurship, encouraging local smallholder farmers and masons to train and build a business centered around green building and improving living conditions for their communities. The Nubian Vault is adapted for private housing as well as commercial or community buildings (agricultural facilities, schools and literacy centers, health centers, churches and mosques, etc). Today, there are over 2,000 such buildings constructed in five countries in the Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Benin and Ghana), serving 25,000 end-user beneficiaries.
Nubian Vault Africa
Also 635 apprentices, masons, artisans and entrepreneurs are trained and active in building greener houses, and their work has generated 2.6 million USD into local economic circuits. Around 65,000 tons of CO2 emissions have potentially been spared. Why it's noteworthy: Beyond the technical innovation, the methodology used by AVN is what really shows its work as true development in action, aiming to empower and grant ownership. The market-based social entrepreneurship model enables access: to housing for those who live in precarious establishments, to employment for those who need a stable off-season activity, to economic development for entire communities and to sustainable practices for populations facing critical environmental challenges. This very unique model has proven its worth, and AVN wants to accelerate development to reach the millions of people in the sub-continent who need better housing today. Its key focus is on mobilising all building and housing stakeholders, builders and clients, and also local and national policy leaders, development actors, financial institutions, and more to integrate appropriate housing concepts into development strategies and adopting the Nubian Vault as a local solution for resilience and growth.