The project is for a new small house for a family of a mother and three children in the State of Mexico. The family currently live in a small wooden shack of 2m x 3m on the site with no running water, gas or sanitary installations or services.
The proposals are for a single storey dwelling with a kitchen, living room, separate beds, a toilet and a shower. The mono pitched roof allows for rainwater harvesting, filtration and storage whilst a dry toilet and electric boiler are also included. The kitchen is semi-exterior as all cooking is done traditionally on open charcoal or timber stoves making ventilation essential to ensure that there is no build-up of contaminating smoke. The site and the other houses in the community are located outside of the State electricity and sewage systems and there is no public water supply. Photovoltaic panels will be installed once the house is complete as part of a local government initiative. The house is intended to be developed incrementally as the family’s situation changes, with the foundations and slab for the later phases forming a part of the initial works. The structure is designed to be simple yet robust to meet seismic regulations and requirements.
Where possible, we have re-used matierals bought for constrution for the fabrication of other elemtns, such as the timber window shutters wheich were fabricated using the shuttering used for the concrete foundation.
The cost of the house is MX$200,000 (roughly £6,000 at the time of construction) and does not rely on the gifting of material or labour in order to complete it, making it a prototype for accessible, off-grid construction for the most marginalised living in remote and rural parts of Mexico.
The team of O’BVdS´s Mexico studio contributed to the construction of the house by providing the paint for, and painting, the house.
Isometric projections of the incremental development of the house.
The open kitchen
Window shutters made from the recycled concrete shuttering.
