Low Cost Housing in Sri Lanka

Currently I am involved in a project, with Hidaya Foundation, for designing and constructing low-cost housing for the victims of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.
As a non-profit organization founded in 1999, Hidaya Foundation has undertaken a mission to implement educational, social welfare, and charitable projects in economically depressed areas of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, USA and Canada.

The project involves designing, training and construction of houses for widows and orphans in the regions affected by the disaster. The idea is not only to build structures, but to build communities that are self-sufficient and sustainable. The main principles will be:
1. Use of local materials
2. Use of local labor
3. Training of locals in sustainable building technologies
4. Constructing communities that the people living there can associate themselves with
5. Managing within a very low budget

The idea is to involve dedicated and willing volunteers who will learn the technology and train the locals to build it themselves with the available local materials. Several materials have been taken into consideration and the research has been consistently spiralling towards mud/ adobe construction. But how relevant is adobe in a hot and tropical region like Sri Lanka? There are many examples of indigenous local housing made of mud bricks in Sri Lanka and roofed with timber or thatch. So a combination of different materials seems to be a logical solution.

Research is still on and we are in the process of communicating and corresponding with other organizations and institutes that do similar work. If any of you out there have any suggestions or ideas, please contact me.
There will more to come on this project in the coming months.

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