The 10×10 Houses in Cape Town, South Africa. Weiland Gulch/Design Indaba

Implementing Agency	Design Indaba
Featured Project	Sandbag House
Location	Mitchells Plains, Cape Town, South Africa
Date	2007-9
End User	10 Freedom Park Settlement families
Design Firm	MMA Architects
Design Team	Luyanda Mpahlwa, Uli Mpahlwa, Sushma Patel, Kirsty Ronné
Contractor	Chinedum Emeruem, Westley Van Wyk
Material Supplier	Mike Trenmere: EcoBuild Technologies, supplier of EcoBeams and Sandbag technology, Schalk Van Der Walt–Tech Homes
Quantity Surveyors	Brian Mahchi-BTKM Quantity Surveyors
Funders	Design Indaba Trust; PG Bison/Pennypinchers
Cost per unit	65 000 South African rand/$8200 USD
Area	500 sq m/5381 sq ft
Occupancy	6 people

South Africa’s post-apartheid Reconstruction and Development Programme provides brick and concrete mortar houses to people who need them through a program that provides subsidies to private housing developers. The current government subsidy per house is 50 000 South African rand, or $6900. Design Indaba challenged architects to design an alternative to the standard government-funded design with which many people were unhappy. The Cape Town-based [design advocacy] organization organized the 10×10 Housing Project competition. In 2007, they invited 10 teams, each consisting of one international and one South African architect, to design a house for a family in Mitchells Plains township, an informal community 25 miles (40 km) from the heart of Cape Town.

The winning design by MMA Architects employs sandbags as a sustainable building material. Sandbags can be used as affordable and effective insulation and offer added protection from weather. “We’ve got to find different ways of uplifting the people and one of them is obviously going to have to be sustainable building because you’ve got millions and millions of people,” says Luyanda Mpahlwa, a principal architect at MMA Architects. “You can’t use the conventional ways, which use high energy and increase the carbon footprint.”

The winning design uses EcoBeams, a product of a South Africa-based company, to frame the house. The vertical beams are made of timber connected with a galvanized metal element. Nylon bags filled with sand are stacked within the frame and covered with mesh wire and plaster to form smooth walls. These houses do not need foundations and the sandbags act as the anchoring element to further reduce construction costs.