The Future Of Affordable, Eco-Friendly Housing

As climate change intensifies, the quest is on for innovative, ultra low cost, sustainable and site-responsive housing prototypes that can be replicated in high risk areas worldwide

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The landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2021 report warned of increased extreme heatwaves, droughts and flooding, as well as a key temperature limit on track to be broken in just over a decade. This highlights the urgency with which climate change is intensifying. With it, housing stability is increasingly coming under threat as well. These two inextricably linked issues have the potential to spark innovative ideas from the international design community and the community at large.

The design philosophy thus is to achieve an innovative, sustainable, cultural, and site-responsive housing prototype, which would be research-based, product/system-oriented, and ultra-low-cost. The goal is also to use waste-recycled and locally-available materials to achieve a Carbon Positive Affordable Housing for a typical, replaceable chosen site context. The low-income, natural disaster-prone estuarine belt of the Sundarbans in India serves as an example, which can be applied to other similar climatic site contexts with the potential of a much wider application.

THE CONTEXT