Introducing a recycled building component

Introducing a recycled building component: A first step towards sustainable and adequate informal housing in South Africa

van den Berg, Stijn (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

van den Dobbelsteen, A.A.J.F. (mentor)
Bilow, M. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Building Technology | Sustainable Design

2019-04-12

This research focuses on the unofficial neighbourhoods on the boarders of South African Cities. The informal settlements are quickly built by unskilled hands on foreign land without any form of planning, supervision or legislation. The self-constructed houses lack of daylight, ventilation and water tightness. This results in poor, unsafe and undesired living conditions concentrated in neighborhoods with high crime rates and low fire safety. Both government and market do not have clear solution for solving the increasing threat for people living in the self-constructed informal settlements.

This study has a specific focus on ‘Woodlane Village’, a informal neighborhood in the municipality 'The City of Tswhane'. The design solution is presented as an incremental building method that uses the existing waste stream of HDPE shopping bags in South Africa. The low-tech building method is based on methods of existing shack-builders. The building components can be produced in a self-sustaining container factory that required a relatively small investment. The factory set-up and additional 3 model houses are presented based on the following leading principals are presented: 1. Climate design, 2. Material use and 3. Esthetics.

The recycled building blocks have better insulating performance relatively to the currently used sheet metal. Two building components, an extruded bar and a compressed panel, are incremented in a set of houses that can be built by unskilled labor. Combining an stack-able sandwich panel with composed corner pillars and roof trusses seemed sufficient to build the complete envelope of an informal house.

The set-up of the proposed factory is designed to be incremented in the existing recycling market. Local ‘Buy-back’ centers show a waste stream of HDPE shopping bags that are not bought by recycling companies. Beside offering improved informal housing the building method could help enhance waste collection and reduce the waste stream of plastics that end up as landfill or as micro-plastics in the environment.

Informal Housing
South Africa
Pretoria
Recycling
HDPE
plastic
building component

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Student theses

master thesis

© 2019 Stijn van den Berg