Madiana

An Earthen family house

It all started about two years ago, when our client, a man in his early forties living in Zürich, approached us with a mission. He wanted to build a house for his parents in his native village in Gambia.

He could have chosen to build higher, bigger, more extravagant than everyone else in the region but - that was not his ambition. Our client was determined to reconnect with his cultural heritage by adopting a different approach. He was willing to build an earthen house in a region where concrete - had become the new norm.

Conceived as a set of three blocks articulated around an existing path, this project dialogues with its environment. Simple flexible earthen mass gathering around a private courtyard, a body made of earth, wood and typha. The walls are made of two layers of compressed earth bricks (BTC) to increase the overall mass and bring stability. That required the production of approximately 30.000 bricks on site.