SESSION 18

MATERIAL PRACTICES THAT LIBERATE SELF-BUILDERS

This session calls for presentations on practices and experiments with non-industrialized, localized, and collaborative construction materials. Green schemes have become a norm for development projects, and private and public construction sectors in so-called global South have been seeking to balance ecological resilience with a pressure to modernize. The ecological and economic ambitions are sometimes at odds, and the conflict is most detectable in construction material use and regulations. For instance, in Rwanda where the session conveners practice, rural brick kilns and thatch roof have been banned in 2003 and 2007, respectively, to protect the forests and grass lands, and to ensure worker safety. But the modernization and industrialization of roof sheets and brick manufacturing may have been parallel motivations, and not primarily driven by environmental considerations. Adobe blocks were also banned in 2006, although the state is due to reinstate them after a consortium of public and private construction institutions issued an improved structural and safety codes. The reversal of a debilitating law was welcomed. It demonstrated the agencies of design and building disciplines to bring back a key accessible building material for the rural poor, and to stand with the underrepresented self-builders everywhere. The session welcomes case studies, policy examples, and organizational structures built around construction materials made by local human power and resources that satisfy the global development industry’s ambition to modernize, while supporting self-builders to build more durably and resiliently.