Uganda, Africa
Enchale International presents a new sustainable and inclusive system for creating housing in Uganda, aiming at solving the country’s housing crisis.
This inclusive and sustainable housing in Uganda has been awarded a 2023 Future House Award by Global Design News and The Chicago Athenaeum Museum for Architecture and Design.
Enchale International is a housing development enterprise that has built and sold more than 50,000 durable, appealing, and sustainable single-family homes to low-income people in Mexico for 25 years.
The company wanted to transfer its know-how and innovative ecoblock technology to developers in Africa in order to address the 50-million-unit shortage that will continue to grow if left unchecked. Uganda was their starting point, a country where the current housing supply shortage is 2.1 million units.
They are targeting underserved lower middle-class workers earning 250-350 USD per month, who are stuck in a cycle of paying half their earnings on rent for a substandard and overcrowded apartment in Kampala; and who cannot afford the average 40,000 USD price of a house that meets their requirements.
Echale offers an opportunity to own a durable and environmentally sustainable single-family home that meets their requirements at 20,000 USD.
The design team for the Uganda house includes three architects: one from the Echale Mexico design team who has experience designing low-income housing with eco-blocks (Echale’s low-carbon compressed earth blocks), Gretel Uribe; an award-winning American architect, Marc Thorpe, to provide a modern design aesthetic; and a Ugandan architect, Jjuuko Kalinge, to provide contextual inputs needed to ensure product/market fit in Uganda.
The Uganda house was designed to meet the geographic, size, and aesthetic requirements of our target audience while keeping the build cost below 12,000 USD and the carbon footprint minimal. The primary construction materials are eco-blocks and other locally sourced materials that minimize costs and carbon footprint.
The 65 square meter houses will be built on plots of land that accommodate 20-100 houses and include shared spaces for community gardens and gathering spaces.
Echale believes in the power of good design to create safe, healthy, and beautiful communities that enable more people to build equity in an asset that breaks the cycle of generational poverty.
Project: Inclusive and Sustainable Housing in Uganda
Architects: Echale International
Lead Architect: Julie McBride
Design Team: Gretel Uribe, Marc Thorpe, and Juuko Kalinge
Client: Echale Uganda
Contractor: Echale International
Photographer: Julie McBride
