African project:
SICU
CONSTRUCTION
Responding to the housing challenge of
rapid urbanization, the project develops a
purposefully incomplete structure that is both
affordable and rapid to assemble.
F
ifteen projects out of more than 6 000
submissions in the 4th International Holcim
Awards competition automatically qualified for
the elite phase of the competition: the Global
Holcim Awards 2015 with total prize money of
USD 350 000. The research project, Sustainable
Incremental Construction Unit (SICU), in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia, is one of them.
A response to the housing challenge in
the rapidly-urbanizing capital of Ethiopia, the project is
process-oriented and aims to both explore and implement
specific construction techniques to tangibly upgrade
the city’s housing stock. Whereas the first phase of the
process was framed by collaboration between academia,
local administration, and inhabitants, the second phase is
specifically focused on the development of a prototype – a
purposefully incomplete structure that is both affordable and
rapid to assemble.
Close to 90% of the building components including
prefabricated concrete elements and lightweight eucalyptus
frames are prefabricated and produced by micro and smallscale enterprises, creating the opportunity for skilled
employment and capacity building. The housing unit is a
“half-ready construction” where the homeowners will be
able to finish the construction themselves, installing building
components and finishes according to their needs.
The Sustainable Incremental Construction Unit (SICU)
experiment attempts to address the climatic, economic,
cultural, and social sustainability of the project context.
This is achieved by using locally-available and locallyproduced prefabricated building elements with standardized
dimensions, an easy to construct modular system, and a
culturally and socially motivated design that enables highly
flexible forms of occupancy. At the same time, the approach
targets mass-customization, affordability and “up-scalability”
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