Nkabom House: Houses Made Out of Mud and Pure Water Sachets to Provide Homes in Remote Villages in Ghana

• Nkabom house is a design concept developed by Anna Webster, a fourth-year architecture student.
• The design responded to a competition calling for proposals for a single-family house in a remote community in the Ashanti region.
• The design comprises compacted earth to form mud in addition to "pure water sachets used as building materials to build homes in rural areas.

In 2014, Anna Webster, a fourth-year architecture student at the London Metropolitan University's school of art, architecture and design, developed the concept of using compacted mud and plastic waste to build houses in rural Ghana.

The concept was an entry into a design competition. The judges chose the design as one of the Top 20 ideas to be built in the Abetenim Arts Village, a learning centre run by the Nka Foundation that provides homes to local artists.

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She set off to Ghana with two other architects to build the prototype in a 10-week mud house building workshop.

During the workshop, a group of eight international participants and 12 locals spent the session learning about the Ashanti culture and traditional building skills, including several mud construction types.

Watch a video of the construction of the Nkabom house below.

They wanted to blend the conventional construction principles they had learnt with new concepts about shape, construction, and the efficient reuse of waste materials throughout the process.

In an interview, Anna Webster talked about why they chose mud and waste materials as building materials. She said:

We aimed to overcome the negative associations of these materials and move away from the primitive image of building with earth by applying a modern design aesthetic.

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The "Toa House" Story: Meet the Young Ghanaian man Building Homes out of Plastic Waste

In a related article, YEN.com.gh wrote about a young Ghanaian man called Paul Coffie Beburo who is building homes out of plastic waste bottles. Toa house, as it is popularly called, is said to be “20 times stronger than brick or blockhouses”. They are also much more affordable and eco-friendly.

Paul stated that he is building the first plastic-built gated community in Africa. He said it is going to feature 73 units on 15 acres of land in Prampram, with 3 and 2-bedroom houses for sale; including the land.

Source: YEN.com.gh