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For more detailed information contact DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP France B.P. 13, 82110 Lauzerte, France
Tel:
(33) 563 95 82 34
Fax:
(33) 563 95 82 42

The World Habitat Award 1998 has been presented by the Building and Social Housing Foundation (B+SHF) to Development Workshop for its role in the
'Promotion of Woodless Construction in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger'.

THE 1998 WORLD HABITAT AWARD - INFORMATION HERE

Woodless Construction - developing a sustainable alternative building method in the Sahel

In the Sahel countries of West Africa, "Woodless Construction" is the name given to the construction of vault or dome roofed buildings using ordinary mud bricks.

Spontaneous 2 dome + 1 vault house, Niger.

The bricks for the walls and roofs are formed in simple rectangular moulds, smoothed by hand and dried in the open - a method habitually used in the region.

Mud bricks drying in the sun.

Both the vaults and the domes are built using techniques, which have their origin in Iran and Egypt. The most important characteristic of these roofs is that they are built without any supporting shuttering. Thus the entire structure - walls, lintels, and roofs - is built with locally available earth and based on a rich building tradition in the region.

A vaulted roof under construction.
  Why Woodless Construction?

The majority of rural and urban dwellings in the Sahel depend on the use of organic materials for the structure of the roof, and often for the walls as well in rural areas. Flat-roofed buildings typically use large beams and intermediary battens to provide the support for grass-woven mats and for compacted earth on the roof. Thatched roof structures consume even more. Surveys show that for almost all such structures the availability and quality of wood or branches has deteriorated markedly in the past twenty years(1).

A typical flat timber roof structure

A frequent complaint is that finding good wood has become extremely difficult. The Sahel has been blighted by years of drought that has contributed to the disappearance of trees, but the biggest single source of degradation is over-consumption by man. Fuel-wood is one major cause for concern, but wood for building is unquestionably the other. The wood used in building invariably requires cutting large tree trunks. The result: many tree species are totally now totally used up, and in some areas whole forests have gone. Woodless Construction was introduced by Development Workshop into the Sahel to provide a viable, affordable and accessible alternative to this dual problem - how to alleviate pressure on the threatened natural resources of the Sahel and at the same time to make building by the population easier using resources realistically available.
 

Sustainable solutions take time: to listen, observe, adapt

Starting with a small demonstration project in 1980 (2), Development Workshop today assists the promotion of woodless construction throughout the Sahel, through Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania, and with smaller inputs to other neighbouring countries. In this process, a key factor has been taking the time to tune the techniques to local realities. Local knowledge too has made a fundamental contribution about how people build and use local resources.

The brick vault and dome roofing systems are not indigenous to the region. Whilst the basic idea of vault and dome building suited the conditions of the Sahel, both the techniques and the way they were introduced needed to adapt to suit the habits, experience and preferences of the Sahelian population and their resources, as well as to suit the local specifics of climate and soil.

There was recognition that this would be a long process. In each new locality time has been needed:

  • To demonstrate the woodless construction techniques and to allow the population to see
    that  woodless buildings would withstand several seasons of rain;
  • For the development of the necessary skills and attitude which are fundamental to the
    successful transfer of Woodless Construction;
  • To listen to the views of the population and to react to their ideas;
  • To observe how the buildings behave in the climate of the Sahel;
  •  To adapt techniques and forms to suit this local context with the local builders.

One example: the brief but often violent rainstorms which are common in the Sahel during the rainy season require particular care in shaping roofs to ensure quick but controlled rainwater run-off. The high winds that accompany these storms drive the rain almost horizontally, and it is often the walls that need protection more than the roofs. Special attention therefore has to be paid to orientation and the choice of surface finishes, which are strongly influenced by local practice.

  Developing skills in the community

Skills development is at the heart of the process of introducing these techniques. Training is done today by local trainers, who started as village builders, or even unskilled labour, and who have worked up through a supported process of repeated training opportunities and on the job learning and experience.
Training - Learning how to build a vaulted roof.
The best trainers now travel the whole region to take their skills to new places, and the exchange of ideas benefits builders throughout the region. Today there are many hundred trained builders, many of whom live by woodless construction work as their main income. Woodless construction represents an important income generating activity.

Both training methods and working practices on building sites are the object of constant evaluation and refinement in order to facilitate the way in which the masons learn the techniques. Regular updates to training materials respond where a stumbling block is identified in a technical process, or to how people learn or, even more important, respond to how the public assimilate the techniques. The training manual is in its tenth edition after 7 years!

This process reflects above all the need to adapt to that that exists rather than trying to impose changes to local practices unless really necessary.

Certainly new ideas are suggested and introduced, but where possible these are used in conjunction with local techniques. As an example woodless construction uses local bricks sizes as available for wall building when these are suitable rather than always insisting on special dimensions for bricks and moulds. In turn, the brick is the unit that determines the dimensions of the building, rather than metric dimensions which are unfamiliar to local builders.
 

Local confidence leading to sustained local use

Confidence in woodless construction has come with the passage of time, thanks to the construction of a wide range of demonstration buildings, and then progressively, the construction of buildings by a variety of local or national proprietors with the help if trained masons.

Over the years, a pattern emerges in the process of popular and social appropriation of the techniques:

  • New areas are assessed for their potential, and much is learned from observing existing earth buildings.
  • The practical process begins with demonstration buildings.
  • Training opportunities are then offered to local builders.
  • During their apprenticeship period builders are supervised in the construction of buildings
    for in a partnership with real clients, who provide the materials, labour and finishings
    for their buildings but do not have to pay the costs of builders who are just learning. ·
  • Once initial training is over, each builder starts to work for himself, although many work in
    small teams.
  • Gradually, a local demand develops and spontaneous construction begins:
    the construction of buildings by local builders for local families and clients with their
    own human and material resources, with no external input.

The process can take several years, and in a year when there is a poor harvest, very little building may take place. The example of buildings for slightly better off families in poor communities is also important in showing local confidence.

Spontaneous building is the key step to taking an innovative technique towards being a sustainable part of the local building process. DW helps this by demonstrating small and easily built one, two and three roomed buildings, suited to housing needs and to small public facilities, all of which have to be easy to copy and affordable.

Spontaneous one roomed house with dome roof, Niger.

As well, combinations of these simple buildings provide the answer to larger building needs such as public infrastructure in the state sector.

A maternity centre in Niger. A typical vault and dome building.

Local builders play the most important role in spreading the woodless construction techniques, and to help them in this task they receive on-going technical and marketing support. The ultimate aim is to ensure that each builder can continue to replicate what has been taught, adapt it to local needs and promote the skills learnt amongst the local community and thus make the woodless construction techniques a central part of the local building vocabulary, long after external inputs are over. This process is taking place, in villages and town throughout the region, and although much remains to be done in supporting the process and training more builders, woodless construction today meets the needs of a growing number of people building with their own resources and skills.

 
(1) On-going surveys and previous work undertaken in Mali and Niger (e.g. Development Workshop, Evaluation des bâtiments et des techniques de construction dans le Cercle de Youvarou, a DW/UICN report, 1991, 45 pp., illus.); and in Niger (Hammer, D. Tunley, P. & Development Workshop, Iférouane - Habitat en Evolution, a DW/UICN/WWF report, 1991, 30 pp., illus.)
(2) After ten years of experience using these technologies in Iran and Egypt where they have existed for centuries, Development Workshop introduced woodless vaults and domes to Niger in 1980 at the request of a small Canadian NGO, ISAID, in the context of a rural development programme. Much of the adaptation work in the early 1980's was done by Peter Tunley in Niger. Over the past 19 years, support has come from a variety of donors and partners, notably Danish International Development Aid (DANIDA) with IUCN, the Danish Red Cross and local Red Cross committees in Mali and Burkina Faso, European Development Funds, SOS Sahel, Lutheran World Relief, the ILO and WWF.
  This text draws in part on a text published by the German Appropriate Technology Exchange (GATE) in 1995, in the BASIN case study series, and their generous support is acknowledged. The Woodless Construction project in Niger was awarded the UN Habitat Scroll of Honour in 1992.

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